Feature story - January 11, 2004
BANGALORE, India — Food for Thought
Greenpeace India's first consumer outreach event of the year
jointly organized with Samvada and the Centre for Social Concern,
at St Josephs Arts and Science College, Bangalore on 11th January
initiated very successfully a process whereby alternatives in
Bangalore were clearly demonstrated.
Father Ambrose Pinto, Principal of St Joseph's College opened
the session with a relevant speech that touched on issues such as
farmers suicides etc.
This was followed by a session, a polarisation exercise on
"Practices like Beef eating that lead to cow slaughter are
offensive the sentiments of the majority community and hence should
be banned"! The students divided themselves into groups based on
whether they agreed, disagreed or were confused.! After each group
presented their arguments , Anita Ratnam of Samvada responded and
tried to make sense of the debate.
This was followed by the session on Pesticides which was kicked
off by the film "In God's Own Country" which stunned the students
into silence. Questions were addressed by Kavitha and Mr
Krishnaprasad from Green Foundation. Here the discussion went into
different aspects of agriculture, farmers attitudes and finally the
alternatives.
Lunch was a semi organic meal of bisibele baath, payasam and
perupu vada and 3 organic pickles. This was the chance to profile
the different organic groups from whom we had procured the
ingredients. There was also a poster "Today's Special" that talked
about the different "items" in the context of true food!
The GE session was next. The fact that it was going to be a
heated debate was determined from the start when a few biotech
students came armed with arguments as they were outraged by the GE
poster!
The last session was by Lawrence on Brands and corporations and
consumers. His outrageous wit and substance kept the students
entertained while he smashed corporations mostly along the lines of
Niomi Cline.