The Mammoth from Mannuthy

The only useful thing I learnt last week was that, thirty years ago, a chap from the Vet College in Mannuthy in Kerala changed the course of inter-disciplinary science by developing a mathematical formula to calculate -hold your breath, no, not breadth, I said breath - the surface area of the elephant.

You read that right.

He had been trying to solve Fermat’s Last theorem and, in the haze induced by that process, decided that the best way to do so would be to ask an elephant to lie flat on a carpet (“Stay still, Jumbo”), while he took out his tailoring tape. 

I just made this up, sorry.  

Apparently, he used the least-squares method – whatever that is (and may mathematics and its mother-in-law never torment my life again).  From all accounts of this method that I looked up online written in (reasonably) lucid English, it does not involve drawing the largest possible squares on parts of the elephant. If it did, any elephant with self-respecting nerve endings would be tickled to bits, each such bit including the remains of an erstwhile researcher as well. 

So, the question that now haunts you no doubt (and for which you continue to hold your breath – it’s getting dangerous, so think of roses) is: why did this genius, this doyen, this man-of-substance, this Einstein-of-Mannuthy do this?  (All this talk of haze and substance is controversial.  Curb the urge.)

Well, he was sipping his naadan chaya one day, when he saw a mahout struggle to climb his charge and it struck him (no, the elephant did not strike him, that would have been the end of the research using the least-square method) that all he had to do was to give the mahout a formula.  (A mahout who knows elephant-surface-area climbs easy.  Old Jungle Saying).

Sorry, I just made that story up again. 

The most notable feature of the task was that they even measured the elephant’s tail, missing no detail however slight (Sherlock H, not me). The tail was considered – for the formula – to be a cylinder, which, if you stretch your imagination with chewing gum and a rubber band coated in coconut oil, it is.  But, if the elephant’s tail is a cylinder, what is its leg, a parallelogram? (this qualifies him right away for a senior job in the Forest Department in some states in India, because that is how they count tigers). 

Finally, he calculated the areas of about 13 parts of 24 elephants (this can only be done in Kerala, one must emphasise; if you try this in Bandipur, there will be 13 parts of yours with 24 elephants, but, in serious matters of reporting facts, one should not digress).  Once that was done, he did some nifty correlation and then declared, in the spirit of Darwin, Wallace, and other luminaries who preceded him, that the formula only needed the elephant’s height and its forefoot pad circumference, both of which, of course, the said elephant is always ready to provide when (politely) asked.  Every elephant, be assured, is salivating to know its surface area.  

But, being the damp squib that I am, I have a problem with this research.  What you need to worry about with an elephant - trust me - is not its surface area, but its volume.  

And, therein, lies a tale (no, not cylindrical).

You will never have the measure of me.

The Poker Table Called Farming

Often, a photo hides far more than it reveals.  
These flowers – white chrysanthemums –  are pretty to the eye and, as I walk past fields filled with them, farmers – more women than men – are hard at work, plucking them in time for the Ganesha festival that could fetch them decent returns.  Some have – to use a metaphor entirely out of place – missed the boat, for their plants are yet to flower and, if that happens before Dassehra, the crop falls between two stools (another metaphor out of place, you point out?).  It will then fetch just a modest return which belies the effort that has gone in.  Hard work, investment in saplings, labour and pesticides and risks to each individual who sprays these toxic cocktails, a risk these farmers accept as punishment and perdition. 

This flowering field is their poker table.

What is missing in this picture is the crop that should rightfully be growing in this season.  Ragi.  

An economist will argue, from his armchair, that this is the way markets work.  I will argue, in turn, that he, like most armchair economists, should go to hell. I am a hobby economist, so I guess I can pass judgement without indicting myself.

The story is familiar: the price of ragi collapsed at the time of harvest this January and has inched back to about Rs 25 a kilo.  At that price, the few farmers who grow an acre of ragi will make a return of around Rs 8000 in six months – the family pitches in with labour (that is not added in the calc) and the male farmer spends two cold winter months guarding the crop at night from a machan on a tree (which is why we have some big trees left), for elephants and wild boar will visit with food on their mind.  

The Minimum Support Price for ragi is close to Rs 34 a kilo, but the TN Government has never bought ragi from farmers.  Never.

So, these farmers – call them the Last Resistance - grow ragi for their daily mudde, and for the stalk that is fed to cattle: milk provides them their weekly cash flow and insurance. The surplus ragi – heaps of it – is sold to middlemen, often to repay a debt.  
Ragi is a perfect crop: hardy, with minimal irrigation needs, no pesticide and sparse fertiliser, if any.  As nutrition, it cannot get better.  Much of this is true for all our millets, each of which is now, in the hyperbolic symbolism used by modern day dieticians, a Super-Food.

Try telling a farmer this, when he gets twenty five bucks a kilo. 
.…and, oh, lest I forget, on Flipkart, ragi flour sells for between Rs 90 and Rs 200 a kilo.

Make a difference: buy ragi from the family that grows it or a farmers’ collective, at market price.  
And do take their photo, for they are heroes, no less.