DENHAM SPRINGS -- Three years ago, 28-year-old Audrianna Atkinson endured a 20-day migraine that resulted in complete paralyzation of the right side of her body.

She then spent more than two years confined in a wheelchair, which made simplest of tasks a struggle, before she was eventually able to move around with a walker.

By the time she met Bill Gvoich, director of the Medical Wellness Program for Peak Performance Physical Therapy, in June, Atkinson was able to walk with the assistance of a cane, although there was a noticeable limp with every step.

At that time, the Denham Springs resident still had difficulty raising her right leg or lifting her right arm above her shoulder.

Under Gvoichs guidance, a lot of has changed in the last two months.

Now, I can easily get it up here, said Atkinson as she proudly raised her arm above her shoulder. Before it was like a slow crawl trying to get it up.

To Atkinson, Gvoich and his Rxercise program is the reason for the progress.

I wouldnt be as far along without these exercises, she said.

Others have said the same about Rxercise, a program Gvoich started eight years ago through Peak Performance that bridges together medical, physical therapy and wellness services on an individual basis.

Rxercise (pronounced R-exercise) uses a team approach with other health professionals, physical therapists and nutritionists to achieve safe and measurable program results. Its established in four locations in Baton Rouge, Denham Springs and Ascension Parish.

Everything runs under the direction of Gvoich, who has a Masters of Science degree in community health and fitness programming therapy from the University of Guelph in Canada.

He has worked in the fitness arena for more than 40 years as an administrator, educator, author and coach, and hes opened a few health clinics during that time. He also produced a fitness television show that ran for 13 years and served as editor for Health Awareness Magazine in Tampa Bay, Florida.

Gvoich has trained professional and national sports teams in Canada and the United States during his long, illustrious career, tailoring personally-designed programs to fit their needs. Some of his trainees have even made it to the Olympics, world and national championships.

But now, rather than helping world-class athletes reach their competitive goals, Gvoich can be found helping his 30 or so clients improve their quality of life.

But the end goal is still the same.

My goal is for them not to just participate, but to thrive and progress, he enthusiastically said.

Gvoichs sessions are held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays each week, and costs are $100 per month, which comes out to less than $10 per session. That is significantly cheaper than a personal trainer because Peak Performance takes care of most of the costs, Gvoich said.

We all believe in this, he added.

What makes Rxercise unique, according to Gvoich and many of his clients, is that it takes into account the individualized needs of each person. Hell go through his clients confidential health history, get copies of their blood work from doctors and design a program that specifically targets their needs.

Gvoich will then supervise the workouts during small group sessions, which allow him to give more one-on-one attention to his clients. As their fitness levels change, he changes their program accordingly.

There are goals each client is supposed to meet during this fitness journey, and Gvoich tries to be along every step of the way.

If you lose weight, improve your strength and your cardiovascular training, that helps with your medical aspects of your life, Gvoich said. Its not only prevention, but it also compliments medical care.

One of the most common issues Gvoich said his clients have is a loss of balance, which is precisely why retired Denham Springs dentist Joe DePaula returned to the program eight weeks ago after he had to stop going following the Great Flood of 2016.

Before then, DePaula said his balance was so off that he had difficulty doing step-ups, an exercise that requires you to step on a raised platform and bring your knee to your chest before switching legs.

After struggling to do even one step-up, DePaula was able to push through an entire set of them during a recent session at Spectrum Fitness in Denham Springs.

I really needed this, DePaula said.

And he isnt the only one who did.

Mary Flowers, a retired teacher and assistant principal who lives in Walker, was also at that session with DePaula and Atkinson on Friday, Aug. 11, working up a sweat as she performed the various workouts.

She joined Rxercise in May shortly after suffering a hard fall in a grocery store parking lot and badly spraining her wrist, leg and knee.

But the injuries were so severe that, during her first workout with Gvoich, she fell to the ground while trying to do a one-legged exercise. After taking a quick look at her right knee, Flowers recalled Gvoich saying it was unusable and likely the reason she couldnt complete the workout.

That convinced me that I needed to do something, Flowers said.

Since that second painful fall, Rxercise has become her main priority. She attends all three one-hour sessions per week and even finds time to work out at Spectrum Fitness on her off days.

Flowers make sure to send Gvoich a text whenever she loses a pound. In less than three months, shes sent 20 text messages.

And every time, Gvoich responds with congratulations before telling her the next milestone.

Just that one-on-one encouragement means a whole lot, Flowers said. Its keeps you focused just having someone there to talk to.

Ive got a long way to go, but Im on the right track now.

Gvoich hopes others will follow Flowers on that track.

The goal is to improve the fitness and wellness of people, regardless of their age, he said. You dont have to be elderly to have the health benefits of an active lifestyle. We have all age groups. A lot of people think its just for the elderly, but its not.

Its for anyone who wants to live a healthier life.

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Local fitness expert uses "Rxercise" program to help others achieve health goals - The Livingston Parish News (press release) (subscription)

TUESDAY, Aug. 15, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Light to moderate drinking can lower your overall risk of premature death and, specifically, your odds of dying from heart disease, a new study reports.

Moderate drinkers -- men who have one or two drinks a day, and women who have one drink a day -- have a 29 percent decreased risk of heart-related death and a 22 percent reduced risk of death from any cause, compared with teetotalers, the study findings showed.

This study is the latest to examine whether alcohol is good or bad for you. The researchers found that light drinkers (fewer than three drinks a week) also receive some protection -- a 26 percent reduced risk of death from heart disease and a 21 percent overall lower risk of premature death, according to the report.

But the relationship between alcohol and death risk is a "J-shaped curve," in which too much drinking can be detrimental to health, said study co-author Dr. Sreenivas Veeranki.

Heavy drinkers are 27 percent more likely to die from cancer, and 11 percent more likely to die early overall, the researchers found. Regular binge drinking one or more days a week also increased risk of early death, about 22 percent for cancer-related causes and 13 percent overall. (Binge drinkers consume excessive amounts of alcohol in a short time period.)

"If you're an alcohol consumer, drink with caution. Drink lightly," said Veeranki, an assistant professor in preventive medicine and community health at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "If you're an alcoholic, consume lower amounts on a less-frequent amount of days. If you're not an alcoholic, don't start, obviously."

For this study, Veeranki and his colleagues reviewed data from more than 333,200 people who participated in the federally funded U.S. National Health Interview Surveys from 1997 to 2009. The survey includes questions on alcohol use.

The investigators linked the survey data to the National Death Index, which showed that about 34,700 survey participants have since died. Of those people, just over 8,900 died from heart-related causes and 8,400 died from cancer.

Prior lab studies have shown that alcohol can lower "bad" LDL cholesterol and increase "good" HDL cholesterol in the blood, Veeranki said. Alcohol also appears to reduce the formation of plaques in blood vessels that can block arteries and cause strokes.

Veeranki noted that studies in the past have provided conflicting advice regarding drinking and health, in part because of unintended biases in the data. In this study, the researchers tried to account for all these potential sources of bias.

For example, the researchers accounted for the possibility that former drinkers might be misclassified as people who have abstained all their lives, Veeranki said. The study team also tried to account for the possibility that people who develop heart disease or cancer are told to quit drinking, which could skew results.

Dr. Eugene Yang, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said that even with these efforts, any such study won't be able to control all of the variables.

For example, the surveys used for the new study rely on people self-reporting how much they regularly drink. "That already creates a bias in the study that you can't necessarily compensate for, no matter how you do the analysis," said Yang, who is also a member of the American College of Cardiology's Prevention Council.

Because of that, Yang said, "we can't really be that certain" about the potential health benefits of occasional drinking.

"If somebody is asking me if they should start drinking, my answer would be that some studies have shown some benefit, other studies have not shown a benefit. And because the level of evidence of a study like this is not the strongest, I don't advocate people start drinking just for the possibility of a cardiovascular benefit," Yang said.

The new study was released online Aug. 14 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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A Little Drinking Might Lengthen Your Life: Study - Sioux City Journal

The year was 1907. The freedom movement in India was gathering momentum. Its leader was detained by the police. The poet Rabindranath Tagore paid him a visit after his acquittal, and wrote the now famous lines: Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my countrys friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of Indias soul! The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God. Hath come Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee.

In the year 1928, the leader had now left politics and had gone to Pondicherry, where he plunged himself into the practice of Yoga.

The poet Tagore once again paid him a visit and declared: You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world, Hearken to me!

Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him: Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath. Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence: Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath!

How does one describe or speak about such a personality? Sri Aurobindo has been called a scholar, a literary critic, a philosopher, a revolutionary, a poet, a yogi and a rishi. He was all these and much more. To have even a glimpse of the true Sri Aurobindo, we have to turn to the Mother: What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

In fact, Sri Aurobindo declared, in no uncertain terms that nobody could write his biography and added: Neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see.

But he was not altogether averse to this effort and even made corrections when some biographers made the attempt. In the process the veil that hid the divine mystery was lifted a little.

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Sri Aurobindo Society | Sri Aurobindo & The Mother

The spiritual age Sri Aurobindovisualised is strikingly different from what present-day proponents of religious fundamentalism talk about with their politics of culture and religion and the stigmatisation of the other.

Sri Aurobindo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

If a real, a spiritual and psychological unity were effectuated, liberty would have no perils and disadvantages; for free individuals enamored of unity would be compelled by themselves, by their own need, to accommodate perfectly their own growth with the growth of their fellows and would not feel themselves complete except in the free growth of others. Sri Aurobindo,The Ideal of Human Unity

We live in troubled times surrounded byloudness loud religion, loud politics and loud nationalism. Yet, on August 15, as the prime minister delivers his euphoric speech from the historic Red Fort, and aspatriotic songs play on radio channels, I strive for something sublime and deep possibly to free myself from the overplay of loud symbolism of independence. I begin to converse with an extraordinary gifted sage-philosopher Sri Aurobindo who too was born on August 15 in 1872. In the process, I realise that people like us university-educated and trained in radical Western discourses often fail to tap our own cultural/philosophical capital to give a counter-narrative, and fight what is going on in the name of Indian culture and religion.

It is always possible to see the limits to what Sri Aurobindo wrote and thought about the way we say that everyone, be it Marx or Ambedkar, Gandhi or Mao, is incomplete. However, as I wish to indicate in this politico-spiritual article, the insights that we gain from Sri Aurobindo are remarkably illuminating a fresh departure from the ugly politics of culture and religion we see in these fanatic times.

The meaning of a turning point: from the political to the spiritual

Life, we all know, is not unilinear; it has its puzzling curves and path-breaking turning points. Sri Aurobindo too passed through this complex trajectory of life, and it transformed him. In the age of colonialism when the model of a colonial citizen was the educational ideal for the newly emergent English-educated Indians, Sri Aurobindos father sent him to England: the site of knowledge and power. With remarkable brilliance and scholarship, Sri Aurobindo spent 14years in England. But then, he came back. From Baroda to Bengal Indian experiences began to shape his pursuits and practices.

This English-educated gentleman began to edit Karmayogin and Bande Mataram the journals that sought to arouse the revolutionary spirit amongst the political class and eager learners. Historians have written about his involvement with the nationalist politics, and subsequently his arrest in the Alipore Conspiracy case in 1908. It was in the prison that he passed through an intense process of inner churning, and this, I believe, led to a major turning point in his life.

His famous Uttarpara speech, which he delivered after his release from the jail on May 30, 1909, revealed the magical power of this turning point: a movement from the political to the spiritual.

I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade, said Sri Aurobindo.

With this vision or inner churning, he found his ultimate calling. He began to listen to the voice within: I am guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your own work for which I have brought to you in jail and when you come out, remember never to fear, never to hesitate. Whatever clouds may come, whatever dangers and sufferings, whatever difficulties, whatever impossibilities, there is nothing impossible, nothing difficult.

He left for Pondicherry, and from 1910 onwards a new quest began immensely meditative and spiritual.

How does one respond to this turning point? Think of yet another turning point when we refer to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. From England to South Africa yes, he did not remain a lawyer. A train journey in South Africa, as his autobiography revealed, taught him the ugliness and brutality of racism. This eventually led to the metamorphosis from the timid Mohandas to the charismatic Gandhi. Gandhis politics was, however, inseparable from his religiosity and spiritual quest.

Mahatma Gandhi with a Congress worker. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

While Gandhi united the political and the spiritual, is it possible to say that Sri Aurobindo separated the two? History poses this question before us, and we need to reflect on it. However, as I wish to argue, even in his spiritual journey never did Sri Aurobindo fail to address to the questions relating to the fate of the nation, its cultural politics, modernity, war, self-determination and human evolution. It was in the Arya a philosophical magazine that he began to write extraordinarily illuminating pieces leading to what I would regard as civilisational gifts The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Foundations of Indian Cultureand many other creations. I believe that we could draw a couple of insights from these works, engage with them and evolve refined politico-ethical practices for creating a better society.

On culture and polity

The cultural politics of colonialism is related to its civilising mission the way the West with its enlightenment rationality and expansionist bourgeois revolution sought to rescue the decadent/barbaric cultures of the colonised from the trap of superstitions and prejudices. James Mills History of British India possibly indicated what Edward Said wrote in his masterpiece Orientalism: the self-perception of the West as a superior civilisation, and its constant gaze and condemnation of the Orient (or fixing it as a locale for Western attention for its redemption) through categories like despotism, other worldly and life negating.

The process of decolonisation required a creative intervention into this politics of culture the way the colonial West hierarchised civilisations. Sri Aurobindos The Foundations of Indian Culture, I believe, was a response to this political and moral need. The way he critiqued William Archers contemptuous reading of Indian culture and civilisation was remarkable. An average and typical occidental mind obsessed with the vitalistic rational idea, as he wrote, could see nothing but despair, passivity and nihilism in Indian culture. However, our culture guided by its religiosity, replied Sri Aurobindo, was neither tiered quietism nor conventional monasticism. Far from denying life, as he elaborated, we accepted the reality of karma and artha, reconciled these human drives with dharma and moksha, and thereby imagined the possibility of a complete/harmonic existence that the Wests vehement secular activism could never comprehend.

Well, this struggle in the realm of culture was part of our struggle for liberation. To refer to Gandhi again, he did it through his critique of the brute force implicit in colonialism, and his creative engagement with the Sermon on the Mount as well as Bhagavadgita . While Gandhi could communicate in folk idioms and come closer to the subaltern, Sri Aurobindos solitude and philosophic reading might appear to be extremely classicist with its Vedantic and metaphysical connotations. Furthermore, it is also possible to argue that in his elaboration, what was missing was the anguish of the marginalised within our hierarchical social system say, the way Jotirao Phule elaborated it in Slavery, or B. R. Ambedkar expressed it in the Philosophy of Hinduism. Yet, what could not be denied was the eternal relevance of his reminder (almost similar to what Ananda Coomaraswamy thought about) that our cultural creations ought to generate a spiritual and psychic beauty, and see beyond the narrow prejudices of the natural realistic man, particularly at a time when the seductive culture industry of global capitalism dissociates the sexualised body from the soul, and sells gross materialism in the name of realism.

From social Darwinism to spiritual comradeship

This quest (which we tend to devalue because of our adherence to social Darwinism) enabled him to evolve a sharp critique of what post enlightenment Western civilisation regarded as the Age of Reason. Yes, in terms of human evolution the power of the intellect or the cultivation of reason has played a significant role. Yet, we are caught into the discontents of modernity. Neither liberal/bourgeois democracy with its competitive individualism nor the state-centric socialist machine with its totalitarianism could help us. Do postmodernists help us? Or do they take us to yet another kind of chaos with nihilistic relativism? Think of Sri Aurobindos point of departure. Reason, he said, neither is the first principle of life, nor can be its last, supreme and sufficient principle.

Only with the awakening of love, he wrote in The Human Cycle, is it possible to realise the spiritual comradeship which is the expression of an inner realisation of oneness. Only then, as he added, is it possible that the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man finds itself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race. In a way, a sense of meaninglessness has haunted the modern secular age (or to use, Nietzsches words, a world in which God is dead). From the neurosis of Sigmund Freuds conflict-ridden man to the absurdity of Albert Camuss outsider we notice the absence of life-enchanting love. And the postmodern fascination with deconstruction does not seem to have an answer. In Sri Aurobindo, as I feel, we see the rising sun coming out of the darkness of night.

In a way, this quest is a quest for further human evolution, or towards ascent and integration from physical to vital to mental to psychic/spiritual stage of human consciousness. His intense philosophic/spiritual prose in The Life Divine narrates the significance of this evolution towards the spiritual age. And it is at this juncture that I wish to assert once again that the spiritual age the sage-philosopher visualised is strikingly different from what these days the proponents of religious fundamentalism talk about with their ugly politics of militaristic nationalism and the stigmatisation of the other. In a way, a quest of this kind, I believe, has to be compared with John Lenons rhythmic lyrics, Erich Fromms communitarian socialism and even Karl Marxs celebration of a world in which love becomes a living expression of man.

Are we ready for a dialogue with him?

Avijit Pathak is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU.

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Amidst the Euphoria of Independence, Is the Nation Ready to Converse With Sri Aurobindo? - The Wire

The song Vande Mataram or Bande Mataram, as the original in Bengali would be pronounced, predates Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyays novel Anandamath, by quite a few years. The verses that contain a mix of Bengali and Sanskrit words were probably written around 1876 and later incorporated in the novel that was serialized in a Kolkata publication in 1881-1882. Its most famous rendition was in 1896 by Rabindranath Tagore at a meeting of the Indian National Congress in Kolkata. During the following decade the two words Bande Mataram or Vande Mataram also caught on as a political slogan for freedom fighters. It has remained widely popular and at the same time generated its own share of controversy. Here is a sample of all that has happened over Indias national song over its 140-years plus history:

Translation by Sri Aurobindo in 1909

I bow to thee, Mother, richly-watered, richly-fruited, cool with the winds of the south, dark with the crops of the harvests, The Mother!

Her nights rejoicing in the glory of the moonlight, her lands clothed beautifully with her trees in flowering bloom, sweet of laughter, sweet of speech, The Mother, giver of boons, giver of bliss!

Vande Mataram Pop: * There have been various versions of Vande Mataram sung in Bollywood songs. The most well known being one sung by Lata Mangeshkar in 1952 movie Anand Math, where the song was set to a new tune by Hemant Kumar.

* Lata Mangeshkar did her own version of Vande Mataram, using the same tune but adding new stanzas in Hindi in 1998.

* A year before AR Rehman did his own version, Maa Tujhe Salaam, in 1997.

* Over the years, there have been many versions, including one by Manna Dey in 1951 and in 2012 Sonu Nigam, Shankar Mahadevan and Sunidhi Chauhan lent their voice to version created by percussionist Bickram Ghosh.

Many versions of Bande Mataram: * Since Bankim himself was no musician, the poem has been scored countless times, using different ragas of Indian classical music by other musicians with one report suggesting the first effort was even before Anandamath was published.

* Tagores rendition in 1896 was a much slower-paced one than what we are used to hear now. This version in Tagores own voice was released on gramophone record in 1904 and is now available on various online platforms.

* A composition of Vande Mataram by Pandit VD Paluskar on raag Kafi was favoured by Gandhiji and was often sung by Paluskar himself at Congress meetings. In 1933, at the Kakinada convention, Maulana Ahmed Ali objected to Paluskar singing the song.

* In 1937, the Congress decided to use only the first two stanzas of the song leaving out the references to Hindu goddesses in the later half of the poem. Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, whose version in raag Kafi was popular, sung it on All India Radio on August 15, 1947.

* At the time of choosing the National Anthem of the country, composer Krishnarao Phulambrikar from Pune worked on the poem, creating variations on raag Jhinjhoti that can be sung easily by large assemblies and one that can be used as a marching song, to overcome various objections that were raised.

* The most heard version that is used by All India Radio at the beginning of its daily programme has been composed in raag Des. While some credit Pandit Ravi Shankar for the tune, there is no definite confirmation about the composer.

A permanent alter ego * Due to the invocation to Hindu goddesses in its later stanzas and its setting within the novel Anandamath, that identified the Muslim ruling class as an enemy, Vande Mataram has faced objections right through Indias history.

* Jana Gana Mana, which was finally chosen as Indias national anthem, was written and composed by Tagore himself and shares the status with Vande Mataram which is accorded the status of national song.

* Jana Gana Mana was also used as the national anthem of the Indian National Army that was led by Subhas Chandra Bose and in Captain Ram Singh Thakuri, the INA had a composer par excellence. The INA also created its own version of Jana Gana Mana in Hindi: Subh Sukh Chain Ki Barkha Barse, to replace Vande Mataram as its anthem for the Provisional Government for Free India in Singapore.

* The INA also had Qadam Qadam Badhaye Ja, the regimental quick march song written by Vanshidhar Shukla and composed by Ram Singh. This song was banned up to 1947. Reports suggest it has been adopted as a regimental march song of the Indian Army.

* In 1933, when first objections to Vande Mataram were aired publicly, poet Allama Iqbals Saare Jahan Se Accha, Hindustan Hamara was sung along with it. Iqbal had originally composed this song called Tarana-e-Hind in 1904.

* Later Iqbal became one of the proponents for the idea of Pakistan. By 1909, he had adapted the song and re-written it as a Tarana-e-Milli that spoke about a Muslim nation spread across central Asia, Arabia and India.

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Vande Mataram: A song in search of a nation - Economic Times

Sri Aurobindo (Photo: IE)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to philosopher and sage Sri Aurobindo on his 145th Birth Anniversary. PM took to Twitter and shared a post saying, I pay my tributes to Sri Aurobindo on his Jayanti. His rich thoughts & grand vision for India continue to be a great source of inspiration. Earlier in the day Prime Minister Modi greeted the nation on the occasion of Indias 71st Independence Day and Krishna Janmashtami. He wrote, Independence Day greetings to my fellow Indians. Jai Hind. Greetings on Janmashtami.

PM Narendra Modi today addressed the nation at the historic Red Fort in New Delhi. This is the 4th time when Narendra Modi unfurled the national flag on August 15 as the Prime Minister. During his speech at the event, PM talked about a variety of issues ranging from triple talaq to terrorism. While talking about triple talaq, he mentioned those women who have to suffer due to Tripe Talaq and said, I admire their courage. We are with them in their struggles. 2017 marks the 71st year of Indias Independence. A movement against Triple Talaq has started in the country. I admire the courage of my sisters who are fighting against it, he said.

PM Narendra Modi Twitter post-

The PM Narendra Modi government today launched an online portal for the gallantry award winners at gallantryawards.gov.in. According to a PIB release, The website gives details of the Chakra Series awardees i.e., Param Vir Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra, Vir Chakra, Ashok Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra. The portal contains information such as name, unit, year, citations and photographs of awardees till date. The Ministry of Defence would welcome any feedback or suggestion for further improvement.

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PM Narendra Modi pays tribute to Sri Aurobindo on his 145th birth anniversary - Financial Express

An 11 minute documentary film Jayjatra made on August 15, 1947 in Kolkata will be shown along with other exhibits at a unique exhibition titled Call for Freedom at Gorky Sadan.

The exhibition has been organised by Kinjal and Russian Centre of Science and Culture in association with Forum for Collectors, Sri Aurobindo Bhavan and Arora Films Corporation.

The short film was made by Arora Film Corporation and the script was read by Birendra Krishna Bhandra. A very rare and historic documentary made on August 15, 1947 was shot in Kolkata. It captured the moods of people and their reaction.

An edition of Time Magazine of 1937 whose cover story was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will be on display at the exhibition. There will be a number of rarely known letters written by Surendranath Banerjee, Hemchandra Kanungo, a disciple of Aurobindo Ghose, Annie Besant, M N Roy and Barin Ghosh. A biography of Pritilata Waddededar by Ganesh Ghosh, one of the fighters of Chittagong Armoury Raid will b displayed. The original photographs of some freedom fighters will be on display too. Some exhibits from the archive of Sri Aurobindo Bhavan will be exhibited.

People began to boycott foreign goods during the proposal to Partition Bengal in 1905 and several entrepreneurs came forward to set up "Swadeshi" industry particularly matchboxes, clothes and medicines. The labels fixed on those products contained slogans on nationalism and some of the labels will be exhibited. There will be an interesting section which will display books that were requisitioned by the freedom fighters while in Hijli and Cellular jails. Posters of films on freedom movement along with the lobby cards will be exhibited too.

There will be enamel boards containing advertisements, coins, records, bags and newspapers clippings and cuttings on freedom movement. Invitation cards of Swadeshi melas which were held to sell Indian goods along with dolls on freedom movement made of porcelain will be exhibited.

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This I-Day, travel back to days of freedom movement at Gorky Sadan - Millennium Post

It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers unrest across the country, he urged the government to take steps to secure farmers income. As India marks 50 years of the Green Revolution this year, the architect of the movement says sustainability is the greatest challenge facing Indian agriculture. Excerpts:

The greatest challenge facing Indian agriculture 50 years back was achieving self-sufficiency in foodgrain production. What is the greatest challenge today?

There are two major challenges before Indian agriculture today: ecological and economical. The conservation of our basic agricultural assets such as land, water, and biodiversity is a major challenge. How to make agriculture sustainable is the challenge. Increasing productivity in perpetuity without ecological harm is the need of the hour. In Punjab, and in other Green Revolution States, the water table has gone down and become saline. Further, during the Green Revolution the population was about 400-500 million; now it is 1,300 million and it is predicted to be 1.5 billion by 2030. The growing population pressure has made it pertinent to increase crop yield.

Also, the economics of farming will have to be made profitable to address the current situation. We have to devise ways to lower the cost of production and reduce the risks involved in agriculture such as pests, pathogens, and weeds. Today, the expected return in agriculture is adverse to farmers. Thats why they are unable to repay loans. Addressing the ecological challenge requires more technology while the economics requires more public policy interventions. In my 2006 report, I had recommended a formula for calculating Minimum Support Price, C2+50% (50% more than the weighted average cost of production, classified as C2 by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices). This would raise the current MSP and has now become the clamour of farmers and the nightmare of policymakers.

The NDA government has said it wants to double farmers incomes by 2022. But they havent implemented the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission Report that you submitted to the UPA government in 2006.

Yes. All kinds of excuses have been given by governments for not implementing this recommendation like food price inflation. But the question is, do the farmers of this country, who constitute nearly half of the working population, also not need to eat? The government is willing to pay Seventh Pay Commission salaries to insulate government servants from inflation, but they cannot provide a higher income for farmers to improve their lot? If you really look at what is happening now, farm loan waivers are posing a bigger burden on the government exchequer compared to what higher pay for farm produce will incur. But the government is not prepared to give the 20,000 crore or so for farmers by way of higher MSP. In 2009, the UPA government gave 72,000 crore as farm loan waiver, but no government is prepared to take long-term steps to ensure the economic viability of farming.

There are three ways to improve the incomes of farmers. MSP and procurement is one. We also need to improve productivity. The marketable surplus from agriculture has to be enhanced. We should also look at making a value addition to biomass. For example, paddy straw is a biomass product that could be used to make edible mushrooms.

The incidence of farmers committing suicides has shown no signs of abating. What needs to be done to address the crisis?

We are not really analysing the causes of farmer suicides. Instead, we are simply attributing it to the inability to pay off debts. Some serious thought needs to be given to how we could reduce the cost of farm production, minimise risks and maximise returns. The solution for ending farmer suicides is not only paying compensation. Ive seen in Vidarbha so many men have committed suicide and their families are left in the lurch. One of the first projects we initiated in Vidarbha at that time was to rescue children and give them education. Farming is the most important enterprise in this country and farmers are an integral part of our country. In China, farms are owned by the government, and farmers are mere contractors. In our case, land is owned by the people. How do you treat this largest group of entrepreneurs? Unfortunately, all policies today are related to corporate powers. What about food security and 50 crore farmers? We need to think about them too.

The Green Revolution of 1967-68 may have resolved the food crisis in the short run, but the heavy use of pesticides and high-yielding varieties of paddy have resulted in environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity. How do we cope with these adverse effects?

After the Green Revolution, I came up with the concept of the Evergreen Revolution. In this we will see increase in farm productivity but without ecological harm. This will include integrated pest management, integrated nutrient supply, and scientific water management to avoid the kind of environmental damage witnessed during the Green Revolution. Ive addressed these issues in my 2016 paper on Evergreen Revolution. I recommended mandatory rainwater harvesting and introduction of fodder and grain legumes as rotation crops to be adopted by wheat farmers in States like Punjab to ensure sustainability of farming. We can also declare fertile zones capable of sustaining two to three crops as Special Agricultural Zones, and provide unique facilities to farmers here to ensure food security. Soil health managers should be appointed to monitor and ameliorate the soil conditions in degraded zones and rectify defects like salinity, alkalinity, water logging, etc.

The Prime Minister recently went to Israel. We have several practices to emulate from there. They have a clear sense of where water is needed and where its not. The idea of more crops per drop has been implemented well in Israel. We should adopt those practices here. You should see how a water controller works in an Israeli farm. Everything is remote-controlled. They know exactly which portion of the field requires how much water and release only the exact amount. We cannot sacrifice on productivity now, because land under crop cover is shrinking. Post-harvest technologies like threshing, storage, etc. will have to be given greater attention now.

Opinion is divided on the benefits of genetic modification technology to improve yields of food crops. Can GM technology help address food security challenges?

There are many methods of plant breeding, of which molecular breeding is one. Genetic modification has both advantages and disadvantages. One has to measure the risks and benefits before arriving at a conclusion. First, we need an efficient regulatory mechanism for GM in India. We need an all-India coordinated research project on GMOs with a bio-safety coordinator. We need to devise a way to get the technologys benefit without its associated risks. At MSSRF (M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), we used GM technology with mangroves to create salt-tolerant varieties of rice. For this we took the genes from the mangroves and inserted them it into rice. To make the most of GM technology we must choose a problem where there is no other way to address the challenge.

Barring the U.S., most countries have reservations about adopting GM technology. Europe has banned it on grounds of health and environmental safety. Id say GM in most cases is not necessary. Normal Mendelian breeding itself is sufficient in most cases 99% of what is being done under GM initiatives is not justifiable. Parliament has already suggested a law based on the Norwegian model where there are considerable restrictions on GMOs.

What is the scope for organic farming when it comes to addressing food security?

Organic farming can have a good scope only under three conditions. One, farmers must possess animals for organic manure. Two, they must have the capacity to control pests and diseases. Three, they should adopt agronomical methods of sowing such as rotation of crops. Even genetic resistance to pests and diseases can help organic farmers.

If you look at the organic farms in Pillaiyarkuppam near Puducherry that were started by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, it is a good model to follow for organic farming. They have adopted the requisite crop-livestock integration.

Climate change has upset rainfall patterns and we have this cycle of droughts and floods, which has rendered farming risky. How do we address these challenges?

Both less rainfall and a higher mean temperature affect farming adversely. Currently we are witnessing drought, excess rainfall, sea-level rise There are both adaptation and mitigation measures to follow in this regard. Ive evolved a drought code and a flood code... some of the recommendations Ive made in recent times include setting up a multi-disciplinary monsoon management centre in each drought-affected district, to provide timely information to rural families on the methods of mitigating the effects of drought, and maximising the benefits of good growing conditions whenever the season is normal. Animal husbandry camps could be set up to make arrangements for saving cattle and other farm animals because usually animals tend to be neglected during such crises. Special provisions could also be made to enable women to manage household food security under conditions of agrarian distress.

In the case of temperature rise, wheat yield could become a gamble. We should start breeding varieties characterised by high per day productivity than just per crop productivity. These will be able to provide higher yields in a shorter duration.

Indias ranking on the Global Hunger Index has become worse over the years and we missed out on the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger. What are the steps we should take to address the matter?

India has done well in production, but not in consumption. What we are witnessing today is grain mountains on the one side and hungry millions on the other. The Food Security Act must be implemented properly to address the situation. We should also enlarge the food basket to include nutri-millets.

Read the original here:
Why can't the government provide a higher income for farmers, asks MS Swaminathan - The Hindu

Even before Mahatma Gandhi returned to India and inspired a mass movement for freedom struggle, hundreds across the country readily took charge and fought against the British oppression. While many such freedom fighters, especially of the early independence movement, find mention in regional folklore, their names remain relatively unknown nationwide.

One such revolutionary is Khudiram Bose. He was one of Indias youngest revolutionaries of the early Independence movement and was only 18 years old when he sacrificed his life for the country. But Khudirams heroics often remain unsung.

Born in 1889 in the now West Bengals Midnapore district, Khudiram was inspired and influenced by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, who was then a revolutionary freedom fighter. Legend has it that fired up by the idea of revolution, Khudiram requested his teacher to give him a revolver.

At the age of 16, he joined secret revolutionary groups and started planting bombs near police stations to target government officials.

Read more:
Remembering Khudiram Bose: A Young Gun Who Died With a Smile - The Quint

Patrons of Stanly County Public Library can now access their favorite digital magazines using Flipster from EBSCO Information Services.

Flipster is a next-generation magazine service that allows people to browse digital versions of the latest issues of popular magazines, courtesy of the library.

SCPL has both Flipster and hardcopy versions of magazines such as Taste of Home, Highlights and People so patrons have the option of accessing the content at the library or remotely. Magazines can be downloaded to Android phones and tablets, Apple phones and tables and Kindle Fire tablets for offline reading anytime, anywhere.

Flipster offers a browse-able reading experience. Users can browse magazines by category as well as perform searches for specific periodicals.

An online newsstand provides a carousel of the most recent issues, as well as a carousel of all issues allowing for quick access to magazines.

The table of contents contains links for quick access to articles of interest and hotlinks within magazines are hyperlinked, opening in separate tabs when clicked. In addition, there is an option to zoom in and out for better readability.

We are excited that the county commissioners gave us funds to add this resource to our growing collection of online resources, says Melanie Holles, library director.

SCPL already offers e-books via Overdrive, NC Home Grown Collection in NCLive, NCKids Digital Books and Tumble Books.

All of these online resources are free to use for all county residents with a library card, and these resources can be accessed at all times, even when the library is closed, Holles said.

Contact Stanly County Public Library or visit http://www.stanlycountylibrary.org to learn more about accessing the librarys digital magazines through Flipster.

To learn more about Flipster, visit http://flipster.ebsco.com.

The rest is here:
Library adds digital magazines to services - Stanly News & Press