Bangalore: City girl Sangita Sharma quit a highflying job to plunge into a soul-soothing vocation, organic farming, after having successfully tried her hands in multiple verticals: as a journalist, ad personality, air hostess and corporate brand ambassador for world’s largest aluminium company.

It was just after reading her lengthy corporate profile that this correspondent made a visit to Gopathi Farm at Singapurahalli of Vidyaranyapura, on the outskirts of Bangalore.

The first scene from the entrance of the farm, Sharma is busy harvesting wheat with her co-farmers Gopal, Ramcharan, Kriappa and Ganga while another farmer Kela is readying an organic lunch in the farm kitchen. It was Sangita’s father Major P N Sharma who influenced her to develop a green thumb.

The New York Times April 19, 2009
The stage lights went up at the Panida Theater, a classy old movie house in Sandpoint, Idaho, and the M.C. stepped out of the dark with one finger high in the air. There was an uprising of applause and cheering. Then, shouting like a head coach before a bowl game, she said, “Sandpoint, are you ready?”

It was a Friday night last November. All around the little town of Sandpoint, beetles were blighting north Idaho’s pine forests. The previous day, the U.N. reported that emissions from automobiles and coal-fired power plants were collecting in brown clouds over 13 Asian and African cities and blocking out the sun. Iceland’s main banks had crumpled, and American auto executives were about to fly to Washington in private jets to plead for a bailout. Off the coast of Africa, Somali pirates were hijacking oil tankers. But the folks at the Panida Theater wouldn’t stop clapping. The Sandpoint Transition Initiative, a new chapter of a growing, worldwide environmental movement, was officially coming to life.

“No luxuries.  Live very simple life and you save time for chanting Hare Krishna… That is my desire.  Don’t waste time for bodily comforts…So produce you own food and produce your own cloth… This is success of life.  In this way organize as far as possible, whether in Ceylon or in Czechoslovakia, wherever…Save time. Don’t be allured by machine civilization… This is soul killing civilization…I wanted to introduce this.  Now I have given you ideas.  You can do it.  You are all intelligent.”

India Regional Governing Body Commission (IRGB) needs to be lauded for a recent unanimous decision on forming – “Varnasrama – based Rural Development Ministry”.  Acting upon the proposal by the Varnasrama Development Committee setup by IRGB in 2007, this historic move will come as very encouraging to all concerned.  His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami, who is involved in preaching and implementing various projects all over the world including his authoring few books on Varnasrama – “Make Vrndavana Villages”, “Varnasrama Education” and “Implementing Varnasrama” was recognized as the right leader in the field and was elected as the Minster for the same in India.