Asafoetida, called Heeng in Hindi, is the dried gum secreted by tap root of several species of a carrot family plant called Ferula. These plants grow naturally in Karakum Desert spread over Eastern Iran, Turkmenistan, and mountains of Afghanistan. After five years of sowing a seed, a plant is ready to yield. The stems are cut down close to the root, a milky juice flows out and quickly sets into a solid resinous reddish-brown mass. After a season of giving resin, the plant dries out permanently.  

When modern science arrived with analytic tools, asafoetida was found to contain volatile sulphur-containing compounds, which participates in various biological activities upon consumption. Upon deeper examination, three major sulphur constituents that have been identified include 2-butyl 1-propenyl disulphide, 1-(methyl thio) propyl 1-propenyl disulphide and 2-butyl 3-(methyl thio)-2-propenyl disulphide. If we look inside popular drugs used for antimicrobial activity, against hepatotoxicity, and anticarcinogenic activity, these three compounds are almost always present. 

Supply chain disruptions during long Afghan war, that started in 1979, and militancy in Kashmir made Heeng very expensive. The import bill of about 1500-2000 tons of Heeng that India has been importing have crossed ₹1000 crore per year. The over-exploitation of wild population and lack of organized cultivation made Iran declared it an endangered species. As goes a cliché – necessity is the mother of invention, plant, and microbial biotechnologist Dr. Sanjay Kumar, arrived on the scene and developed a practical method of rapid regeneration of this species. 

Dr. Sanjay Kumar approached ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBPGR) and secured seeds from Afghanistan and Iran following a lengthy process. Using ecological niche modelling (ENM) a site was selected near the Center for High Altitude Biology (CeHAB) at Ribling, in Lahaul & Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh. One in a hundred asafoetida seeds germinates under normal conditions but by meticulous planning and care, the CSIR-IHBT team achieved 2 plants for every 3 seeds. The Headspace-gas chromatography (HS-GC) analysis on one-year old plant has confirmed presence of all major sulphur compounds.

.The tissue culture laboratory at CSIR-IHBT has developed an efficient method for regeneration of Asafoetida through somatic embryogenesis. Scientists have grown cellular mass out of cultures from root, leaf, and stem of mother plant. The high frequency of regeneration of the derived callus will encourage them to carry out protoplast culture, somatic hybridization, and genetic transformation. The group joined hands with Himachal Pradesh State Department of Agriculture that organized cultivation in five districts. Plantations were also made in Uttarakhand, Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir.

Besides a long-standing friendship, I share with Dr. Sanjay Kumar nativity and alma mater. We both were born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and studied at the GB Pant University, of course in different times and fields. With doctorate at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Sanjayji has been trained at the Texas Tech University and the Kansas State University in the U.S. and Rothamsted Research in the UK.

For Dr. Sanjay Kumar, science is the discovery of the secrets of nature. Through his work on high altitude plants, he discovered a novel carbon fixation pathway. Transplanting this pathway in a heterologous system reduced photorespiratory losses leading to photosynthetic gain and yield enhancement. According to him, winter dormancy and drought stress in tea, carry all the secrets for secondary metabolite synthesis and imparting stress tolerance to other plants.

Another work of far-reaching consequences led by Dr. Sanjay Kumar is growing of apples in North-East India. Apple trees thrive in temperate climates and needs cold winters to ensure plant dormancy and subsequent fruit production. Apples play a leading role in the economy of Himachal Pradesh. The uncertainties of the monsoon, dependence over the old cultivars, and pathogen infestation have created unwarranted uncertainties and hardships for the apple growers. 

Most apples need at least 1,000 cold hours. Low-chill apple types can thrive with as little as 400 winter chill hours, whereas moderately chill apple varieties need between 400 and 700 chill hours. Dr. Sanjay Kumar organized efforts to get apple trees that can withstand heat and have been bred over time in kinds that are suitable for colder winter climates. Many dwarf rootstocks with disease and insect resistance as well as cold hardiness can be developed by technological intervention. 

Apple trees in an orchard are generally not grown from apple seeds. There are two parts of an apple tree – the rootstock, which controls the size of the tree and the scion or cultivar which determines the variety or kind of fruit that grows on the tree. The scion is the plant which has the properties desired by the propagator, and the rootstock is the working part which interacts with the soil to nourish the new plant. The two parts are joined together by grafting. 

The CSIR-IHBT, Palampur, where Dr. Sanjay Kumar assumed leadership in 2015, have developed micropropagation technology for the rapid multiplication of commercially important rootstocks which can be utilized for re-plantation in apple orchards. By “designed grafting” low-chilling apple cultivars, apples can now be grown in warmer climates at even 700-meter altitude. The CSIR-IHBT, Palampur, had supplied 87,000 plants for cultivation in Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh.

When my friend Dr. Ben Karenzi was in India, he informed me that apple crates must travel all the way from South Africa to Rwanda, making them very expensive. The climatic similarity between Manipur and Rwanda made us think of growing apples in Rwanda to great economic gains there. John McChlery, horticulturist from South Africa endorsed the proposition. Of course, things happen at their appointed times, and we can play out little parts and wait for larger forces arriving at the scene. For the bioeconomy to be successfully integrated into society, there must be a relationship between science, politics, and society. 

Bioeconomy is a buzz word these days. Though it is generally used in context of ethanol substituting a part of petrol, but the bioeconomy’s largest niche is occupied by food systems. There are tremendous possibilities and the two stories I discussed are merely tip of an iceberg.  As self-made scholars of the emerging field of bioeconomy, Dr. Sanjay Kumar and I see approximately $100 billon Indian bioeconomy as of 2023, poised to become $150 billion by 2025 and $300 billion by 2030. Like all things pass, poverty also must go for our small farmers living in remote places by taking and science and technology to them

I consider meeting Dr. Sunkavalli Chinnababu as a gift that the new year 2023 brought me. Not even 50 yet, Dr. Chinnababu is a rising star in cancer surgery and is considered among the best in performing robotic-assisted surgeries in the country. A pleasing person with impeccable manners, he is full of zeal and exudes enthusiasm. He invited me to his house and at the workplace and during our several meetings I felt as if I was meeting a younger version of my mentor, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. 

Chinnababu was born in a family of limited means in a village in the interior of the Kalyana-Karnataka region, as a second child to his parents. As goes the legend, his great-grandfather was a landlord in the West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh, considered the “rice bowl of India.” An elephant guarded his house. As is always said about rich people of bygone eras, he was too trusty and lost his fortune to scheming relatives and friends that forced his next generation to migrate for livelihood. 

Travelling westward, crossing the arid Deccan Plateau by public transport in a cascade of small trips spread over a year, they arrived at the Tungabhadra River basin to do farming, perhaps the only livelihood they knew. Putting together whatever they had, they bought two acres of land and settled for good in a village called Ashok Nagar Camp. It was a remote place; a habitat of some 300 people, not connected to any road or railway line. A small irrigation canal, emanating from the Bhadra Dam and flowing eastward, was its only connection with the rest of the world. Even the canal would dry up for three to four months every year. 

Chinnababu had to walk three kilometers every day to attend the government primary school in Nalkudre, a small village near Davangere. The teachers were more like guardians to the children. Teaching was done at a slow pace with a lot of emphasis on discipline, especially taming the impulses. He enjoyed his studies. There was not even an iota of remorse about the hardship of the long walk every day. But as every contented soul eventually gets blessed, the decision of the Government of India in 1986 to establish co-educational schools, known as Model Schools, called “Navodaya Vidyalaya,” with one in each district, arrived as a boon. 

The aim of these new schools was primarily to provide talented youngsters living in rural areas, with high-quality modern education, which would otherwise never reach them. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi even ordered free boarding and housing facilities, everyday necessities, bedding, etc. for the needy, and textbooks, stationery, and uniforms for every student. Two students from every school were invited to write an entrance examination for the Navodaya Vidyalaya in Shimoga, now called Shivamogga, and Chinnababu happened to be one of them.  

The Navodaya Vidyalaya followed the PCMB (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology) system. Therefore, there was no hesitation when deciding between Mathematics and Biology, together with Physics and Chemistry, as is the case with other educational formats. He could appear for both the Engineering and Medical entrance examinations. He secured an engineering seat at the Regional Engineering College, at Surathkal, Mangalore; as well as a medical seat at the Jagadguru Jayadeva Murugarajendra Medical College (JJMMC), Davangere, which he eventually joined “because it was nearer to his village.” 

Once, alone while studying a cadaver, a dead human body dissected for teaching medicine, in the gross anatomy lab, Chinnababu had a deep spiritual experience. He felt as if the end of life was staring upon him, and suddenly realized that each cadaver was still a person. It was just that the “act” in the world was concluded for him. If this was what we all turn into at the end, what must one live for, he pondered. And he could sense the Immortal Spirit inside, which was making him work through people alive to extend what had already been done, into what further needed to be done. That day, Chinnababu took a decision to live for a legacy – not money, power, or fame, but to make things better for the coming generations. 

Dr. Chinnababu started finding new meaning in events and experiences with his teachers and patients. He realized the truth of the saying of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822 –1895) that luck always favored the prepared, or that chance favors the prepared mind; or even better, of Seneca, a philosopher of ancient Rome, who defined luck as the intersection of preparation and opportunity. He did his master’s in general surgery from Government Medical College, called GMC, Surat, and super specialty in Surgical Oncology from the Gujarat Cancer and Research Institute (GCRI), a state-owned cancer research institute in Ahmedabad. 

In 2007, Dr. Chinnababu started practicing at the Kamineni Hospital in Hyderabad. In May 2009, he attended the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Orlando, Florida, and rubbed shoulders with world leaders there in oncology. Inspired by the discussions on whether experimental cancer therapies should be available outside clinical trials, Dr. Chinnababu took a sabbatical and got trained at the Long Beach Cancer Center, Los Angeles, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, investing all his savings in the process. Renowned head and neck surgeon Dr. Jatin Shah, and oncologist Dr. Ashwin M. Shah became his role models. 

In 2010, Chinnababu created a company, ClinSync Clinical Research Pvt. Ltd., with the aim to synchronize clinical research with drug development, with oncologist Dr. Suresh Attili, Dr. Suresh Kamireddy, and Kiran Avacha, at the Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute. They succeeded in creating many affordable indigenous drugs used in cancer treatment, notably Imatinib and Capecitabine. Moved by the plight of a widow with children of a 26-year-old man who died of tobacco-induced esophageal cancer, who did not have money to take the dead body and perform the last rites, Chinnababu created the Grace Cancer Foundation, inviting IPS officer B. L. Sujatha Rao to lead it. 

Dr. Vijay Anand Reddy, director and radiation oncologist at Apollo Cancer Institute, Hyderabad got Dr. Chinnababu an invitation to join the Institute with new equipment – a surgical robot. Together with gynecologist Dr. Rooma Sinha, they made an incredible team in driving the robotic program in India.

Working with Dr. Subhash, a doctor in Nizamabad, every Friday since 2009, Dr. Chinnababu goes there to attend to cancer patients who have no means to travel to Hyderabad and pay for costly treatment at super specialty hospitals. Eventually, he adopted the Indur Cancer Hospital and established the only community cancer center for five districts in north Telangana, including a state-of-the-art linear accelerator, and radiotherapy machine. Dr. Chinnababu also organizes the Global Grace Cancer Run every year to create awareness about the prevention of cancer, which is indeed very effective to keep away cancer, the brutal king of all maladies. On October 9, 2022, in the fifth edition of the Run, 10,00,00 people participated across 130 nations.

What drives Dr. Chinnababu to learn new treatment modalities at the world’s best centers, perform a cancer surgery a day for the last 15 years, travel to Nizamabad every Friday, and indulge in clinical research to make medicines affordable? His answer is, repaying for the benediction of getting a human birth. The education, privileges, and love and respect that he receives must be paid for by serving the poor and needy. And above all, by creating a legacy, laying a path that younger doctors may tread in their careers.  

Life has its own way of cheering you up. As you grow older, age shows up on your energy levels, the futility of striving for good things stares at you, a feeling of resignation looms large, and then something surprising happens to cheer you up, as if a ‘gift’ has been delivered without any occasion. I received such an invite to address 200 children from the best of the schools in India, Dubai, and Singapore, assembled at the iconic Hyderabad Public School in a keynote address at the concluding event of a five-day camp called The Round Square, organized as part of their centenary celebrations. 

I have been living in Hyderabad since early 1982 and had passed by the Hyderabad Public School spaced away from the road by a huge playground fenced by big old trees hundreds of times, glancing at the majestic building, but had never entered inside. I grew up in a lower middle-class setup and never enamored myself by the things that are meant for the elite – including institutions like clubs, hotels, and public schools. Of course, now my grandson studies at Hyderabad Public School and would be a part of the elite upon growing up, God willing. 

The Round Square is an international network of schools. German educator Kurt Hahn (1886-1974) founded it in the late 1960s; it started in a round-shaped building in a square area at Gordonstoun in Scotland, from where it derived its name, and then six schools networked to follow Kurt Hahn’s educational concepts. Their network has grown to have 230 schools across 50 countries since then. There are 60+ Round Square schools in India, which encourage students to go beyond academic excellence and strive for personal development and responsibility through service, challenge, adventure, and international understanding.

I was mentored by legendary Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, and it was only natural that I invoked his memory in my speech. Dr Kalam was passionate about interacting with children and made it his mission to visit as many schools as he could. There is no data, but my ballpark estimate is that 20 million children had seen and heard Dr Kalam in their schools. No other leader in the world had done it before him or after him. So, while interacting with the students, I invoked his memory and imagined what he would have said on this occasion about the cultivation of gratitude and patience in life. Sabr and Shukr are like the two wings of a bird to fly over this world full of suffering, as Buddha called it. I exhorted children to feel thankful for whatever they already had and to cultivate patience without getting agitated for all that they wished to have in their lives. 

Hyderabad Public School has a great tradition. Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayen, T K Kurien, and Harsha Bhogle studied here. Three students later became Chief Ministers, and many became Union Ministers. I wondered what if the Prime Minister of post-2050 India was sitting there that day. And why not a girl? When I said it, there were loud cheers and I have no words to describe the positive energy that was palpable in the way children were conducting themselves – sitting attentively, walking buoyantly, and making eye contact while interacting.  

Good schools are essential in society.  American social reformer Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) famously said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults.” A lot has been done in independent India in this direction. There are good schools in every town and primary education has reached most of the 600,000 Indian villages.  

In the Round Square schools, six ideals are fostered among the students – International Understanding, Democracy, Environmental Stewardship, Adventure, Leadership, and Service – making an acronym of IDEALS. The principal, a dual Master of Sanskrit and English, from Agra in Uttar Pradesh, personified the education of New India – anchored in a 5 millennia-old civilization and aspiring to lead the world in the 21st century. Listening to him – a baritone voice, flowing like a symphony – was indeed surreal. 

Why is good education for children important? Three fundamentals come to my mind – social skills, personal growth, and the expansion of consciousness. Every child is conditioned by his family atmosphere and, unless exposed to other children, runs the risk of growing up as a dysfunctional adult in the society. In schools, children learn to interact socially with others outside of their family and the wider community. By interacting with children of different backgrounds, genders, and beliefs only one can be free from risky prejudices. 

Education instils discipline, which aids in a child’s ability to maintain concentration. The foundation for prospects for future growth is laid by children’s education. The periods of teaching different subjects, intervals for biological breaks and food, assembly, sports, music, arts, and above all, the cultivation of civility, prepare a child to become a competent and productive adult. Educational programs today are made that way. Children can develop emotional and mental fortitude through schooling, which benefits them in their later lives.

Perhaps the most important fundamental is the expansion of consciousness. By raising the consciousness of their students to the next level, good teachers indeed act like sculptures of the soul. Swami Vivekananda has said, “We are magicians waving magic wands and creating scenes before us at will. We are the spider in his huge web, who can go on the varied strands wheresoever he desires. The spider is now only conscious of the spot where he is, but he will in time become conscious of the whole web. We are now conscious only where the body is, we can use only one brain; but when we reach ultra-consciousness, we know all, we can use all brains.” (Complete Works v. 7 p. 15)

Once the consciousness of a child is expanded – from the confinement of “I” and “mine” to “we” and “ours” – the behaviour of the child is automatically changed for rest of his life. Hyderabad Public School is doing it – enthusiastically and effectively I must add – and it was evident that evening. In the book You Are Born to Blossom, where Dr Kalam gave me an opportunity to co-author, he writes, “The management of knowledge must move out of the realm of the individual into the networked groups.” (Chapter 7). I could see this truth shining through The Round Square. 

Impermanence is the mark of existence, declared Buddha. Nothing remains forever. People born in different times live in a world that is different from what their ancestors were living in. The signs of this change can be felt during one human lifetime itself. The world where I am living in my sixties is not what it was in my childhood. There is so much money around, the pace of life has accelerated, people are connected 24×7 and most things are ordered online, including medicines, vegetables, hot food, and of late, even Irani chai in Hyderabad where I live. 

I consider the Buddhist concept of the Law of Dependent Origination – the ever-moving wheel of cause and effect – as the most profound knowledge that I have acquired in my lifetime. This one idea contains in its ambit all the philosophies and sciences of the world. All that exists in this world, including in the unseen world of the mind, cyberspace, and microbes, is filled with innumerable intermediate stages – people are growing and ageing, seeds are becoming plants, crops are providing food, oil is burning in an internal combustion engine driving machinery, water and wind streams are rotating turbines, and so on. 

The Law of Dependent Origination is explained differently by Plato, the philosopher of ancient Greece, who observed that there is nothing new under the Sun. It essentially means that things in this world keep changing their forms – becoming, flourishing, decaying, dying, and assuming different forms – but this does not go beyond the surface of the earth, or let us include the 60 km layer of air around it, which we call the atmosphere. The universe, which is vast beyond human comprehension (and Planet Earth is as insignificant as a grain of sand in the desert) remains unaffected by what goes on the Earth – wars, revolutions, technology advancements, and so on – there is nothing new under the Sun!

The mood of India is upbeat these days. We are celebrating the 75th year of being an independent nation and the next 25 years are declared as the Amrit Kaal – our final sprint to become a developed nation. Things are changing for sure. What is this change? When change is universal, what is this fuss about India changing? It is important to understand change as breaking out of the status quo. What has been must go and new forces replace the old drivers. Look at the leaders who are now sitting in the legislatures, the new academicians, businesspeople, and people buying a banana and making the payment by scanning the QR code with the vendor from their mobile phones, three-year-old kids playing video games and listening to digital music of their choice – and you can feel this change. When I watch some leaders invoking primordial identities and jaded ideological issues, a sense of pity rises in my heart looking at these drowning stars in the morning sky. 

Some thoughtful people in the Western world have captured the ancient ideas well and have seen things from a boarder perspective. American billionaire Ray Dalio (b. 1949) who founded the investment management fund Bridgewater in 1975, describes a Big Cycle comprising of three entwined cycles: 1) the long-term debt-money-economic cycle, 2) the internal order-disorder cycle, and 3) the external order-disorder cycle. Together, they determine how the world works.

Nothing happens randomly, by this or that leader, systems evolve and create leaders. There is a pattern of how financial stability, internal stability and international stability take form by actions of people and businesses. Millions of conflicts are always happening – in families, communities, company boardrooms, over wealth, power, and values. These are apparently inconsequential like the Brownian motion of gas particles in a container and yet this eventually creates a force vector. Difficult are the times when financial problems occur at the same time as large internal and external conflicts over wealth, power, and values. Storms are built up from these millions of fluttering wings. Something that is happening in our immediate neighbourhood in the South and the West. 

Globally, the Ukraine War has already defined the pattern of the new world order. The supremacy of the Western world – which means Western Europe and the United States – has been successfully challenged by Russia, with China as its ally. There will be more such events – even bigger in magnitude and scale. The politics of the oil-rich Middle East region is undergoing a tectonic shift. African people are out of their centuries-old slumber and have realized their value of being the food basket for a growing number of people across the globe. 

The economic sanctions imposed by the Western world over Russia have not only effectually failed but also prepared a blueprint of global trade without dollars as the intermediate currency. Once this happens full-scale, a new world order would be in place. It may take a year, or two, or five… but it will happen. The day the BRICS system – an economic grouping of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa – becomes BRICSS – with Saudi Arabia joining it, a new era will commence in the history of mankind. It may be delayed, but it is inevitable. 

Where does India stand in the new world order? Where it already is! The new India must neither be capitalist nor communist. We are the land of the Golden Mean and the most humane people that ever lived on the earth. The Maha Upanishad declares (VI. 71):

अयं बन्धुरयं नेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् ।

उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥

A narrow-minded view sees people differently as their friends or not. For people of noble character, this world is their family. 

It is time to emerge out of this spiritual darkness in our minds and regain all that has been lost in the world outside. All we must do is keep our democracy, our institutions, and social harmony intact. What could be a more powerful force than a billion people – talented, hardworking, products of an ancient civilization, religious by nature, compassionate, and with a value-driven mindset? 

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam used to say, “Strength respects strength.” People who live grounded in their civilizational values receive cosmic support and flourish as flowers blossom under the sunlight. Our biggest strength is this righteous way of living. The slavery of 1000 years, the societal degradation, and even the bad governance that people of this country have been suffering have the ignorance of this value system as the root cause. 

The hostilities in the neighbourhood will die their own death. Our enemies will implode by their own conflicts. The irrefutable law of karma does not spare anyone. People – families, communities, nations – pay for what they do, and what they have allowed themselves to become. In this time of rapidly changing flux, it is important not to lose patience and do some foolhardy things. By vacillating, we will be not only delaying the new world order but also diminishing our role in it.

There is an interesting piece of history, not about kings and empires, but about land and life itself. Much before human life started on planet Earth, all the land on the globe was a single, giant landmass called Pangaea. In the age of dinosaurs, about 180 million years ago, Pangaea cracked up into two parts that drifted away from each other. Gondwana became the Southern and Laurasia, the Northern Hemisphere. Some 40 million years down the line, Gondwana split into Africa-South America and India-Australasia-Antarctica. Breaking further after floating for another 100 million years, India collided with Asia, raising the Himalayan mountains. It is interesting to see the borders of South America, Africa, South Asia, and Australia like matching puzzle pieces.

For me, the transition from 2022 to 2023 has been marked by meeting two scientists from Australia and Africa – Rajeev Varshney, a world-renowned geneticist and John McChlery, an agronomist in South Africa. Prof. Varshney was on a visit to ICRISAT (his previous organization where he worked for 17 years) for signing an MoU, his first after taking over at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. McChlery, third generation Zimbabwean now working as Regional Manager, Export Trading Group (ETG), a global conglomerate encompassing Agricultural inputs, logistics, merchandising and processing, was visiting to study how sunflower cultivation in Africa can bridge the perennial demand-supply gap of edible oils in India, currently at 14 million tonnes a year, spending ₹1.56 lakh crore, or 20 billion dollars. Dr. M. S. Chauhan, a well-known biotechnologist, and the new Vice Chancellor of G. B. Pant University, met Prof. Varshney on the sidelines of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) meeting in New Delhi, to start an Indo-Australian University exchange program in seeds. 

Food is a fundamental need of life. The countries that ignored this truth suffered immensely. The memories of the horrible 1960s are still alive when I had to stand in queue at a ration shop, foregoing my school to collect wheat donated by the United States – a reddish variety much inferior to the Indian wheat – but there was no other option. The efforts of scientists led by Norman Borlaug (in collaboration with M. S. Swaminathan) in shortening the height of the wheat plant and thereby increasing grain volume, eventually saved the day for India. India is self-sufficient in producing grains and is feeding 1.4 billion people without imports. But the same can’t be said about pulses, where there is a supply deficit of 3–4 million tonnes, and the situation in oilseeds is even worse. 

Availability of affordable food in sufficient quantity with all macronutrients is an existential challenge before any government anywhere in the world. They do whatever is great in all other areas but fail here, and they are gone! The population is steadily increasing, and it is imperative to increase productivity under sinking natural resources and declining ecosystems. With rampant urbanization on a roll, there is no scope for more land being available for cultivation. Whatever land is used for farming will only shrink. Climate changes are also having an adverse impact on crop productivity and animal health. No one has a clue why Delhi was cooler than Dharmshala this winter! 

The issue of increasing yield involves seed genetics, which has been embraced by China and the United States with open arms to great effect. In India, however, it remains a politically sensitive issue. There are powerful lobbies that oppose the cultivation of genetically modified seeds, pretending to be blind to the fact that 70% of the edible oil imported is already coming from genetically modified seeds. The issue of the fully indigenous mustard hybrid “DMH-11” for seed production was dragged into court for years before, to the great delight of farmers, the Supreme Court ruled in its favour, but the rumblings of discontent have not yet gone away. 

Finally, a middle way has been found. In May 2022, the Government of India released guidelines for genome-edited plants and laid down clear regulatory pathways for their cultivation. While the insertion of any gene from another species remains prohibited, scientists can now carry out genome editing, called site-directed nucleases (SDN) in scientific parlance. There are two possibilities – editing is done without using a DNA sequence template or with an externally supplied template sequence of the naturally occurring mutations in the same species. These are called SDN1 and SDN2, respectively. The use of foreign gene(s) in a specific location of the genome, conferring new/ novel trait(s) remains forbidden. It is designated as SDN3. 

Things have already started happening. Researchers are deeply engaged in the development of genetically edited seeds for crops, including rice, wheat, and sugarcane to improve their yield and quality. Students in our agricultural universities are acquiring skills, like knocking out a target gene; adding a fluorescent or epitope tag; inserting, deleting, or replacing bases; and carrying out a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome, called SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) and pronounced snips. This blessed tribe is increasing every year and the gene editing era has already begun in India with gusto. Like we say BCE/ CE, hereafter, agriculture history would be designated as BGE/ GE.

The good news is that an improved crop variety, which is free from foreign DNA, need not go through a complex regulatory regime, and farmers can use the fruits of the labor of their scientists without the complexities and controversies that have been applied to them, while the produce grown outside, for example, edible oils, is sold in the market, making great profits for traders. 

The work of scientists like Prof. Rajeev Varshney in the area of genomics leading to high-yielding legume varieties in India and Africa, and the enthusiasm of university leaders like Dr. M. S. Chauhan, is auspicious and a harbinger of India leading the world in food sufficiency. I see the vibrant ICT sector in India stepping in sooner than later to help predictive design with artificial intelligence (AI) tools and providing blueprints for the new gene-editing tools that can make multiple edits in a single genome. Once gene editing, called CRISPR in scientific parlance, becomes a more favorable regulatory situation and becomes like plant breeding, India, with its vast network of agricultural research will lead the developing world, starting with its “lost in childhood at a fair” Gondwana brother, Africa. 

Going beyond higher yield, it is now possible to genetically engineer crops that require less water, fertilizers, pesticides, and land. In the United States, soybean and corn yields have been enhanced by 20% while lowering water usage by 40% and reducing corn’s nitrogen needs by 40%. And the story does not end there. A genetically edited tomato in Japan, called the Sicilian Rouge High GABA, is already in the market as a product of choice to reduce blood pressure. This is a huge benefit and ignoring it would be no different than being an ostrich burying its head in the sand. There will be 10 billion mouths to be fed, and science is the only way to grow enough food with whatever land and water the world would spare. 

The utility of sleep is undeniable and of late, there have been excellent books emphasizing it. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has published in his 2017 book, Why We Sleep, declaring beyond ambiguity the impact of sleep on the human brain. The book, while teaching the basics behind how sleep works neurologically and biologically, cautions against cognitive impairment along with brain damage due to sleep deprivation. 

Sleep is inseparable from dreams. The whole night, we go through the cinema of dreams, mostly fulfilling our wishes and living out our fantasies, but also suffering scary nightmares and feeling a high degree of anxiety and terror in the process. There are hundreds of books about the interpretation of dreams, starting with Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams published in 1899, to The Complete Book of Dreams by wellness consultant and modern mystic Stephanie Gailing, published in 2020. Gyan hi gyan hai!

I have been an avid reader of books on dreams and could get rid of my chronic migraine headaches in the mid-1980s by practicing insights from Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, written by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Frederick “Fritz” Perls with two co-authors. The book taught me to enhance the awareness of my mind and bodily feelings in the present moment. Later, I read about mindfulness and tried to practice it, without much progress. Bad dreams continued to trouble my sleep and I, by and large, failed to decipher their meanings. 

But recently, triggered by Chade-Meng Tan’s book, Search Inside Yourself, I read almost a dozen books, including two celebrated books by the psychologist Daniel Goleman – Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, and two books by Jon Kabat-Zinn – Full Catastrophe Living, and Coming to Our Senses. Kabat-Zinn is a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has been running a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program to great success, since 1979. But the climax came after I read Dream Yoga by Andrew Holecek. 

First and foremost, the book aptly defines yoga as “that which yokes or unites.” To make what is fragmented a whole again is yoga – synchronizing body and mind at the least, and eventually, the conscious and unconscious mind with the cosmic mind. Then it introduces the scientific term for the study of dreams as oneirology and exhorts readers to explore their inner space like astronauts explore outer space, by becoming “oneironauts.” Rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, the Vajrayana branch, the book brilliantly succeeds in taking the reader from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the exotic to the esoteric, and from the easy to the more difficult. 

There was a hugely successful film, Inception, released in 2010, about dreams. The hero, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a professional thief who can steal information by infiltrating the minds of people. He takes up an “assignment” to get into the dreams of the heir to a Japanese business empire, by his competitor. The plot thickens when the hero enters the dream world and is confronted by his deceased wife who had committed suicide, and the hero feels guilty about being the real cause of her death. The unconscious mind protects itself by weird imagery in dreams, and skills are needed to uncover its secrets. The point the film made is that the dream world and the waking world are entwined.  

Andrew Holecek’s book turned the tables by declaring that it is not that our sleep in the night depends upon what happened during the day, but rather, what happens during our sleep decides how we flair up the next day. Holecek writes, “When you fall asleep every night, you are actually falling awake. You just don’t know it yet.” Taken at its face value, how do I benefit from this knowledge? It is here that the book delivers. 

Simple tips are provided to induce “lucid” dreams, which means dreams in which you are conscious of dreaming. I like the advice to lie down in Buddha’s famous Loin Posture – the right hand is folded and placed under the head, with a finger gently closing the right nostril, the left-hand rests on the left thigh, and the legs are very slightly bent. Then bring your awareness to the breath going inside and coming out, while the mind dissolves in a “hypnagogic” state – you are still aware of the world and yet images are floating – and finally dipping into a deep sleep.

Dreams are only a part of the total sleep, which happens in 90-minute cycles – about 5 cycles every night. Initially, the sleep is mostly deep, without dreams (called Non-rapid Eye Movement or NREM sleep), and later, towards morning, it is mostly full of dreams (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep). The book calls our ability to be conscious in a dream, Dream Yoga, with the purpose of confronting what is scary and fearful, and changing the dream. For example, if someone is chasing you, just stop running mindlessly, turn back, and confront the chaser. Or, if you are locked, or trapped in a maze, find an opening, and emerge out. If there is a fire, enter it. If there is water, walk into it; if there is a height, a cliff, jump without fear – because after all, it is only a dream. 

Holecek invokes the majesty and fearlessness of a lion and asks us to be like one in the dream. He writes, “The lion is the king of the jungle, fearless and uncontested. His gaze is set in contrast to the gaze of a dog… if you throw a stick out and away from a dog, the dog will chase after the stick. But if you throw a stick out and away from a lion, the lion will chase you. The lion’s gaze is set upon the thrower, not on what is being thrown. We all have the gaze of a dog, forever chasing the sticks thrown out by our minds. We’re constantly running after the thoughts and emotions that are endlessly tossed up from within… And that’s the basis of our suffering… it takes a fearless gaze to look deeply within the jungle of our own mind.” 

My take on Dream Yoga, of what all it may mean, is to take a “cinematic view” of day-to-day life. Be like a spectator watching a film and living the events around – seeing people around you as actors performing their roles – teachers, helpers, masters, drivers, traders, doctors… even “friends” and “enemies.” Centuries earlier than William James, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declared:

अत्र पितापिता भवति, मातामाता, लोका अलोकाः, देवा अदेवाः, वेदा अवेदाः। अत्र स्तेनोऽस्तेनो भवति, भ्रूणहाभ्रूणहा, चाण्डालोऽचण्डालः, पौल्कसोऽपौल्कसः, श्रमणोऽश्रमणः, तापसोऽतापसः। 

In this state, a father is not a father; a mother is not a mother; the worlds are not worlds; the gods are not gods; the Vedas are not the Vedas. In this state, a thief is not a thief; the killer is not a killer; there are no high castes, intercastes, or outcasts; a monk is not a monk; a hermit is not a hermit. (4.3.22)

So, imagine while retiring to your bed every night that you are resting in the embrace and wisdom of the Cosmic or Universal Self, which is free from desire and without fear. With practice, you will wake up in a state that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore called Chitto Jetha Bhoyshunno – Where the mind is without fear.