BHARATI PAWASKAR
TGLife: You wear so many hats “ you founded ‘Earth Keepers Connect’ which is a global network of people who provide solutions in health, food and environment. You have authored a book, ‘Become Healthy or Extinct’ and now the ‘New Earth’ summit’? Brief this concept and its purpose.
Darryl D’Souza: Perhaps, this is the first time that such a summit on ‘New Earth’ has been organized not only in Goa, but in the world. It is to discuss integrated solutions for widespread problems we have in health, food and environment.
Since 2013, I organized four Continued Medico-Spiritual Education Conferences, which were about healing of the mind, body and spirit through an integration of modern medicine, complimentary medicine, alternative medicine, energy medicine and the ancient healing sciences. Our 2014 and 2015 editions in Goa were well received. But the limitation of our approach was to deal only with the ‘self’, and not the external things that we depend on (like the earth, water, air, environment, soil, food sources, daily consumables, body products etc). The ‘self’ is made and sustained by all of these and no solution is long lasting or complete without their involvement too. The purpose of The New Earth Summit is to show the various ways of correcting all the mistakes we have made as a species on this planet that is now destroying the planet at a very rapid pace. The solutions that have been carved out to correct all these mistakes, is now being known as the making of New Earth.
Can organic food be the solution?
DD: The demand for organic food and consequently the growth of the organic farming industry that Goa has such big plans for, is not going to happen if the end consumer does not know why and how organic food consumption leads to good health. Their education and demand for organic food is the most important thing to make the entire healthy food supply chain run properly. So the future of organic farming does not actually lie in doing organic farming conferences, but in doing health and food conferences. So it is all interdependent, and if anyone thinks it’s not, it is a failure of their intelligence. The New Earth Summit rewires all these disconnected intelligences that have been making our living ecosystems fail so far.
Why are people unhealthy today, in spite of wealth, comforts, medicines and information?
DD: One of the reasons why cancer is on the rise and why so many people across the world are having digestive disorders and skin allergies, joint inflammation, lung failure, liver cirrhosis and kidney failure, why more and more children are born nowadays with birth defects or get sick at an early age, is because we are making food into poison. Unhealthy farming practices and unhealthy processing of foods convert natural food into poisons that the human body can no longer process and get the right nutrients from. Wrong food group choices, like the excessive consumption of meats also create an ecological imbalance on the planet that is now destroying our soils and water, as well as the very air we breathe.
Pollution is a real menace, but can we curb it?
DD: There are a rising number of cities in India now where people say the air is unbreathable. Whilst the major part of pollution comes from vehicular traffic, a sizeable amount of the pollution pie is from the amount of pollution caused by the manufacturing of packaged and processed foods. This industry is also responsible for half of the garbage problems on the planet and all the air bone and water bone diseases that stem from garbage dumps all over the place. People have made a simple life so complicated and fast with their materialistic desires which lead to stresses of its own, like more and more money needed for their materialistic purchases, and finally a resultant of a lack of time for one another that causes deterioration in relationships as well.
People are more informed today but do they have informed choices?
DD: There is a lot of information in all forms of media, but the problem is that it is wrong information that does not look at the whole ecosystem balance and that’s why it is not fixing any problem, whether it be in our health or food or environment. Modern medicines are also a bunch of chemicals that only treat symptoms and they do not provide real cures like our natural ancient herbal remedies. So don’t expect more money and more medicines to solve health problems. This approach has already failed miserably over the decades. Day1 of The New Earth Summit gives the designs of the new holistic and natural medicine system of the future. Every sick person in Goa must attend it. It will be the most educative and helpful day of their lives.
The New Earth Summit
It’s India’s first summit on health, food and environment is happening on November 8, 9 and 10 at Panaji Convention Centre at Mala in Panaji with the sole aim of creating awareness about the root causes of problems in healthcare, food supply, living spaces and environment, and to showcase unique solutions that have been implemented in some places in Goa and around the world, by experts. The summit will also facilitate the creation of an eco-friendly, self-sustaining and diverse local economy model for the state of Goa that can set an example for others across the world and thereby contribute to the creation of what is being called ‘new earth’. During the three-day summit 30 speakers will deliver talks to around 1000 delegates from Goa and across the world. The video recordings will go live on the YouTube within 15 days of the summit for outreach and action. These videos will be dubbed in Konkani and Marathi too. There will be project stalls, product stalls, healthy food stalls and organic markets. The online entry pass valid for three days is available for Rs 1000.
Who would speak?
Dr Shikha Agarwal, Dr Neeru Goel, Felly Gomes, Aswathy Sreekumar, Jay Sutaria, Manish Paliwal, Anny Kohli, Karan Manral, Miguel Braganza, Peter Fernandes, Nevil Alphonso, Kamalakar Sadhale, Valerian Mendonca, Gemini Xettigar, Aditya Harmalkar, Claude Alvares, Capt. Joseph Lobo, Hyacinth Pinto, Tallulah D’Silva, Saritha Sudhakaran, Abhinav Apte, Romaine S, Dattaprasad Shetkar, Roshan Mathias, Puja Mitra and Darryl D’Souza
