Hindu food security model
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Hinduism, is a civilization, rooted in the Shastras (ancient sciences), an unbroken civilization since at least 10,000 years. Naturally it had already thought of solutions to problems such as famine and food security. The very reason why this problem happened in the first place was because of destruction of “Hindu food security model” by the Christian alien invaders. As already mentioned earlier, SadaShiva has given the basic principles of Hindu economics clearly and quite elaborately in the Āgamas. “Wherever things do not reduce by sharing – like education, it has to be given free. Education within the matrix is aparavidya. Education beyond the matrix is paravidya. Sadashiva is very clear. Even for apara-vidya you cannot charge. The services that need to be done everyday – the survival things, like food, medicine footwear etc he allows bartering. And only for the things that are long term – such as construction – he allows currency transaction.”
The wanton destruction of the Gurukul educational system and the Shastras was the major reason for the collapse of food security which still continues even after the so-called independence of the country. The food security model during that era was as follows
- A farmer would grow his crops.
- In case of a failure he will go to the temple.
- The temple cellars would have some donated grains collected by elderly men of the village.
- The elderly men would give the grains on loan to the farmer as much as he wanted on loan basis.
- Then the next year the farmer would return the same amount of grains and the interest, also in form of grains alone, to the temple.
- The interest charged would be only a simple interest. There was a different set of agricultural accounting which was entirely different from commercial accounting. The rules for bartering, charging interests, writing off grain loans etc were completely different from the rules for a commercial loan or transaction. The idea of compounded interest was not employed, because the point of the 'temple bank' and granary was not to exploit but to provide food security for the village. "Krsi-Parasara" is one of the surviving agriculture accounting text of that era.
- The temple granary would slowly build a reserve of grains in the years of ample yields, which would be useful in case of a famine. In case of a famine the entire village would get the grains and all grain loans could be written off for the welfare of the larger community. Because there was no artificial (often inflated) currency associated with this write off, there was no corresponding hyperinflation which hits a modern economy in a similar situation or such financial crises.
- A neighboring village would even have the possibility to borrow (take loan) from another village in the case of a distress. The system was not centrally institutionalized, but a dharmic seva started and handled by the people of the villages locally and regionally. It was this decentralized storage of grains within the context of the codes of Āgamas ('Yes to Life') and Shastras which protected the human civilization from these agrarian crises and famines for many millennia.
- The discontinuity of broad-based agricultural education and the education for agricultural accounting, because of the collapse of the Gurukul system led to the destruction of the food banking system.
The decentralized food security system could have been revived, had the system been left intact, in place. Alas it was not. The Christian British colonial era saw a complete eradication of this resilient and humane system. In the following video we can see how the current commercial agriculture is not able to sustain the requirements of farmers and they are often seen throwing their agriculture produce because the sale price was lower than the cost of production.
In the Gurukul education the following was inculcated: dignity of labour, respect to the farmer, to the priests and every limb of the society. For example, a book on agriculture, used in that era, the second verse of the book, declares, "that if a learned priest who has knowledge of 4 vedas, even after learning 4 vedas if looks down at farming considering it inferior, that person is surely to suffer from poverty”. The context of this verse is that all professions, especially farming should be respected.
प्रजापतिं नमस्कृत्य कृषिकर्मविवेचनम्।
कृषकाणां हितार्थाय ब्रूते ऋषिपराशरः॥१॥
पराशर ऋषि ब्रह्मा को प्रणाम करके किसानों की भलाई के लिए कृषि कर्म का विवेचन करते हैं॥१॥
चतुर्वेदान्तगो१ विप्रः शास्त्रवादी विचक्षणः।
अलक्ष्म्या गृह्यते२ सोऽपि प्रार्थनालाघवान्वितः॥२॥
चारों वेदों में पारङ्गत, शास्त्रों का ज्ञाता, मेधावी ब्राह्मण भी यदि कृषि कर्म को हीन समझता है तो वह दरिद्रता से ग्रस्त हो जाता है॥२॥
प्रजापतिं नमस्कृत्य कृषिकर्मविवेचनन्।
कृषकाणां हितार्थाय ब्रूते ऋषिपराशरः॥१॥
पराशर ऋषि ब्रह्मा को प्रणाम करके किसानों की भलाई के लिए कृषि कर्म का विवेचन करते हैं॥१॥
चतुर्वेदान्तागो विप्रः शास्त्रवादी विचक्षणः।
अलक्ष्म्या गृह्यतो सोऽपि प्रार्थनालाघवान्वितः॥२॥
चारों वेदों में पारङ्गत, शास्त्रों का ज्ञाता, मेधावी ब्राह्मण भी यदि कृषि कर्म को हीन समझता है तो वह दरिद्रता से ग्रस्त हो जाता है॥२॥
No wonder the realised wages of the Indian Hindu farmers and their productivity was much higher compared to the European countries, as observed in Edinburgh Review, Vol 4, July 1804: Review of Dr. Tennant`s Indian Recreations, 2 vol, Extract pages 321-324.
A rich source of the state of Indian agriculture in the early British era is a report prepared by a British engineer, Thomas Barnard, and his Indian guide, Raja Chengalvaraya Mudaliar, around 1774. This report contains data of agricultural production in about 800 villages in the area around Chennai in the years 1762 to 1766. This report is available in Tamil in the form of palm leaf manuscripts at Thanjavur Tamil University, and in English in the Tamil Nadu State Archives. A series of articles in The Hindu newspaper in the early 1990s authored by researchers at The Centre for Policy Studies highlight the impressive production statistics of Indian farmers of that era.
A similar comparison of Bengal from William Adam’s report of agricultural production tonnage per hectare during 1800s is even more than today’s agricultural production tonnage per hectare with all available so-called 'modern' techniques. The Hindu system of organic agriculture surely had a profound positive impact on the food security of mankind under its fold. SOME NARRATIONS ON INDIAN AGRICULTURE, PLASTIC SURGERY, TANK IRRIGATION SYSTEM, CHRONOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE, INDIAN COTTON TEXTILE INDUSTRY AND OIL WELLS IN BURMA –Dharampal Collected Writings Volume II, pp.7-9 http://samanvaya.com/dharampal/frames/downloads/vol2.PDF