Poverty Alleviation
By Popularising Sericulture

By Khilendra Basnyat

SERICULTURE is an organised production of silk. It has recently been gaining popularity in different countries for various purposes.

Crucial

Sericulture can play a crucial role in poverty alleviation and economic growth. It is ideal for labour utilisation, income generation and environment protection.

The slikworm, which is capable of doing something that no other insect can do, is a wonderful insect. It has been spinning silk cocoons for nearly five thousand years. Nowadays, in many countries, silkworms have been spinning more silk then ever before.

The mulberry tree and the silkworm have a strange partnership, the former being able to live without the latter, but not vice verses. In order to raise silkworms, the trees must be tended and the leaves gathered and chopped up; the larvas must be fed, moved and cleaned.

Silk is the queen of fibre. It is a non-conductor of heat. In winter, silk garments are warm because they retain the body’s heat and in summer they are cool because they keep the heat out. Silk, therefore, is a good insulating material.

Silk is useful in that it absorbs the porspiration from the skin and then allows the moistures to evaporate from fibres. In fact, this is an efficient colling process in the summer when people perspire most.

Although rayon, nylon and other man-made fibres can also be given a silk like shine, silk is the shiniest of natural fibres. However, pure silk has a rich deep and glowing sheen that results from chemicals in the glands of silkworms.

One of the characteristics of sericulture is that although raising thousands of silkworms at a time takes effort, it is not all heavy work. Therefore, some of it can be done by men women, children and old people who are unable to do other kinds of farm or domestic work.

An acre of mulberry trees provides adequate leaves to feed at least 0.16 million silkworms. Generally, many farmers divide their fields into three sections, one to feed the spring crop of silkworms, the other for the summer and the next other for the autumn crop. When the mulberry trees are allowed to grow naturally, they become tall.

Although in Nepal sericulture had been practical for many years in a casual manner, it was only in 2042 B.S. that it was started in an organised way. However, this work is still being carried out using old fashioned methods.

Planting mulberry bushes and raising silkworms have become successful in the Terai, inner Terai and low mountains areas. Although practiced in seven districts now, sericulture reportedly can be extended to sixty-seven districts of our country. As a move towards this, His Majesty’s Government has set a priority to extend sericulture to twenty-one districts linking with poverty alleviation.

It has been estimated that one thousand and five hundred plants are essential to rear twenty thousand silkworms (thrices year) that can produce twenty kilograms cocoons whose price ranges from one hundred and forty-five to one hundred and ninety rupees per kilogram, depending on the quality of the cocoon.

Nepal, despite having suitable climate and soil for taking to sericulture in a big way. It had not been able to derive maximum benefit from this sector due to the lack of necessary inputs and facilities. Apart from this, lack of skill and knowledge among the farmers and market outlets for products have hindered sericulture.

In the past, farmers used to grow mostly cereal crops and only a few cash crops were crown. Ever since the government adopted the policy of encouraging farmers to grow cash crops by giving incentives for the same, farmers have slowly switched over to cash crop production which has benefitted the farmers in a great deal. With the switching over to cash crop production farmers’ income has increased.

Despite priority and encouragement to the cash crop production for both governmental and non-governmental sectors for the upliftment or rural farmers, sericulture was not on high agenda in the past.

However, with the growing market for sericulture product, mainly silk both at home and abroad, sericulture is becoming a lucrative venture. Consequently, many farmers have started this business. Since sericulture does not require large areas and adequate money, even small farmers can start this business in a small room with little capital. Apart from this, the government has the programme to provide various kinds of technical and financial support to farmers for the promotion of sericulture in the country.

Sericulture farming in Nepal has been successful in the case of Baireni of Dhading district, which is now popularity known as ‘Silk Town’ because of the increasing attraction of farmers towards this venture. Since sericulture has been a profitable venture for local farmers, more priority and support should be given for its further development.

At present, Nepal’s total annual yield of cocoon amounts to nineteen to twenty metric tonnes which gives about 2.5 tons of fibre. This undoubtedly seems insignificant when viewed against the total annual consumption of silk fibre amounting to eighty metric tons that drains away about one billion rupees every year. These figures show that much more remains to be done before sericulture can transform the national economy.

Most rural people are poor in Nepal. About forty-two per cent of the Nepalese people live below the poverty line, with more such people in the mountains than in the plains. It has been estimated that among those below the poverty line, about seventeen per cent live in extreme penury who needs special care for income generation.

Helpful

Today, poverty is a major problem for the country and it touches a large chunk of the Nepalese people, especially those who reside in rural areas. Sericulture, if developed and expanded in our rural areas, can help generate income, thereby helping alleviate rural poverty.

From Sudan To North Dakota

By Larry Yungk

WHEN Foni Silvestro and her family escaped the seemingly unending civil war in their native Sudan, they had apparently left one hell only to reach another. They spent years in refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya. Scorching heat, sandstorms and uncertainty were constant companions. When they flew to New York after being accepted for permanent resettlement in the US yet another shock awaited them; they were going to one of the most remote areas of the country, a town they had never heard of called Fargo, North Dakota. "Are there other Sudanese living in Fargo?" they asked nervously as they waited to board their flight into the known. "Now many" came the discouraging reply.

Shock

The culture shock was mutual. Barry Nelson, executive director of an agency called Center for New Americans which helped the Silvestro family, recalls the surprise of the North Dakotans: "Well, at first it was somewhat of a surprise for local people to see very tall Africans walking down the streets."

In fact, Fargo provides a microcosm for America’s resettlement programme. Sudan is a world removed from North Dakota. Both regions may be dominated by breathtaking sweeps of unending plains or savannah grass-lands, but there is little other similarity. In summer, southern Sudan can be among the hottest places on earth. The Dakotan winters are among the most severe with temperatures regularly dipping to minus twenty degrees.

Still, in the last six years more than 250 Sudanese families from 15 different tribes hae begun their lives anew in Fargo, a place which catapulted to fame recently and ended decades of international obscurity when a film of the same name, a black comedy about kidnap and
murder, captured the imagination of a global cinema-going audience. Refugees from Somalia, Bosnia, Viet Nam and the former Soviet Union have also settled here. Last year nearly 600 refugees moved in.

The United States is one of only around a dozen countries which accepts annual quotas of refugees for permanent resettlement. Since 1975 more than two million refugees have settled in the U.S and a further 75,000 will arrive this year. This figure represents more resettled refugees than all other countries combined.

A web of federal, state, local government and non-governmental agencies spend an estimated $500 million annually on resettlement-a massive amount compared with global refugee expenditure. UNHCR’s annual budget, for instance, to help an estimated 22 million poeple globally, is only twice that.

Still, despite such largesse, the American program is not without its critics. Some have charged that especially during the cold war era, resettlement was dominated by political rather than humanitarian concerns when, for instance, huge numbers of persons were admitted from the former Soviet bloc while African and other refugees were overlooked.

That has begun to change. As Washington places more emphasis on people in immediate need of finding a new, permanent home, resettlement from places like the Middle East and Africa is growing. This year, nearly 18,000 African from 25 countries are expected to come to America, the fastest growing refugee population, compared with frewer than 7,000 only two years ago.

Overall, owever, the number of refugee admissions to the US dropped from 207000 in 1980 to 132,000 in 1993 and to a proposed 76000 target for next year, according to Mark Franken, the executive director of Migration and Refugee Service of the U.S Catholic Conference, one of the major agencies assisting new arrivals.

In evidence before a congressional sub-committee earlier this year, Franken said the decline represented a "lack of political will to meet fully our humanitarian responsibilities" and undermined Washington’s "global moral leadership " in the humanitarian field. He urged the government to increase both funding and numbers of admissions.

But Julia Taft, Assistant Secretary of State in charge of refugee issues, says numbers tell only part of the story. In an interview with REFUGEES she said the government had responded to challenges that it should spread its net far wider than in the past in seeking about and helping the most desperate of the world’s refugees.

"We’re being more selective, working with UNHCR and others to find people who are really at risk, who need to be moved more quickly", she said.

But this does not come without a cost. In Africa, for instance, the United States was screening "something like-24 different African nationalities from over 40 countries "Julia Taft said.

The organisation and infrastructure needed for such an effort was far more complex and costly, he said, than during earlier times when resettlement refugees were selected from only a few specific areas of the world.

There is a huge public support for refugees and refugee admission in this country," Julia Taft said. "When these people arrive here, they help form a positive attitude in their communities. They are making a major contribution to the country. And that gets translated into congressional support, which not only reflects a willingness to bring more people here but also to support refugee assistance overseas."

Fargo would probably not be the first choice for many new arrivals, but in recent years the United States has sought to spread the load away from traditional resettlement areas in California, Texas and New York to other regions of the country.

When they do arrive here, most are pleasantly surprised -despite the harsh winners—by a good work environment and schools, affordable housing and one of the lowest crime rates in the country. If, as Barry Nelson said, people were initially surprised by seeing tall Africans in the community, today "diversity is seen as a value, rather than something to be feared." Refugees have added a valuable contribution to the region’s labor base and have started new enterprises including small business and ethnic restaurants.

A Sudanese church provides a spiritual and social center for new arrivals. Self help, or mutual assistance agencies, promote language and cultural services. Sudanese, Vietnamese Somali and Sierra Leonean families have been officially licensed as foster parents.

Expectation

They include Zacharia Reng and his wife. Theresa who are currently taking care of Theresa’s 13-year-old Sudanese brother. Similar homes may soon provide care for unaccompanied refugee minors expected to arrive from camps in Kenyas as Fargo’s resettlement population continues to grow.

REFUGEES
Whenever, Wherever Just Be Yourself

By Sanjeev Pandey

ONE of the worst, most deadening mistakes anyone can make is to knowingly suppress ones’ true personality. Even to try to modify your inborn personality because of outside pressures or inner fears is, in a sense, an attempt to improve on the Creator. Yet we all do it to some extent, at one time or the other only to find out later that it was a mistake.

There is, after all, only one you-the unique being created as yourself, who may never be replicated—so you may as well be it for all you are worth, and for all that it is worth to you.

Not to be yourself, is a form of dishonestly-whatever may be the reason. And lack of self-honesty can be profoundly damaging to the psyche. Failures in self honesty are at the root of almost every emotional and mental disturbance. Wise living consists not only of knowing oneself but also in being a good judge of oneself, without any element of self-deception. Indeed, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to claim that in almost every poor human relationship in almost every unhappy or broken marriage, there is an element of betrayal and self-deception on each side.

Equally, however, the unending ability to know and be one’s true self, aware of the bad and good equally, to fully come to terms with the innate nature one has been born with, is the most powerful source of all.

Why does any one fail to be true inner self? Sometimes, the reason may lie in fear, in the native timidity that holds one back from untrammelled self-fulfilment. More often the fear lies in the imagining of what other people will think of us. Take half a dozen ordinary people at random, and listen to each in turn speaking on the telephones.

"Being all things to all people’s is an admirable ideal, achieved by only a few. Most of us are content to be many different things to many people. The true, rich, serene personality is the one that is always shiningly the same, whatever the company, whatever the circumstances.

Other people must, sooner rather than later, accept us as we really are, for self-camouflaging is almost always ludicrously obvious to the very people if seeks to deceive. As we all come to learn eventually, what other people think is of no importance we never know what they think anyhow; and if we did, their thoughts at the given moment would probably be far removed from ourselves as their main subject. In fact, anyone simply and unashamedly himself is usually much more confidently attractive to others.

Never, then, suppress your true personality not even partially, not even temporarily. It may well be more attractive to others we all seek to please than we normally realise.

So champion the right to be yourself at all times. Dare to be different, if that is what it entails: dare to be as different as you feel to be. Stand fast in your own path. Set your own pattern that fits you the best, and live your life according to it, unafraid to make changes as changes may be required— but unafraid, too, to stick to your own uniqueness. Follow your own star, in short, but first make sure it is your own, and no one else’s.

If you are convinced of the need to be your own well more fully than hitherto, a good way to start is to devote a short time each day-half an hour, perhaps, ten minutes to conscious positive thinking as you look outwards on the world; This is the real me. The time alloted can gradually be increased, for soon a deep feeling of exultation and an increased self- awareness will begin to spread over your whole being. Eventually this kind of feeling will become a conscious, everyday one.