Soundararaja's Trust Honours 11 Thanjavur Organic Farmers

Soundararaja's Mannukkum Makkalukkum trust gave the Nammalvar award and Rs 5,000 each to eleven organic farmers in Thanjavur on Nammalvar's 88th birthday.

Eleven farmers in Thanjavur got a certificate, a garland and Rs 5,000 each this week, handed over by Soundararaja on a stage set up under a portrait of the man the award is named for.

The Nammalvar award is given out every year by the actor’s Mannukkum Makkalukkum Social Welfare Trust, timed to the birthday of G. Nammalvar, the agricultural scientist who spent his life arguing for organic farming in Tamil Nadu. This year would have been his 88th. The eleven were chosen for farming honestly and without chemicals, which is the whole of the criteria.

Soundararaja paying his respects at a portrait of Nammalvar, with paddy saplings and millets laid out

This is the second year of it. Last year the trust took the same ceremony to Usilampatti in Madurai district and honoured eleven farmers there. Soundararaja said the response that day, and how pleased the farmers were, is what made him do it again.

“I consider this one of the most meaningful moments of my life,” he said.

Soundararaja handing over a cheque to one of the honoured farmers

Thanjavur MLA R. Vijay Saravanan attended as chief guest, and Ko. Siddhar gave the address on organic farming. Nammalvar’s nephew Boominathan was there too, which Soundararaja said meant a good deal to him.

His pitch was aimed at people much younger than the men and women he was garlanding. Young people need to understand what farming is worth, he said, and society needs to build the habit of respecting the people who grow its food. Organic farming, in his framing, is not a technique but a way of living that looks after the soil and the health of the people standing on it.

He also brought up Chief Minister Joseph Vijay, who has said that if there were another life he would want to be born a farmer’s son. Soundararaja took him at his word and said he expects the government to do right by farmers on the strength of it.

Plant more trees, protect the water bodies, and look after the trees already planted rather than counting them once and walking away. That was the rest of it, and the trust says farmers, students and social welfare projects will keep coming.

Rs 5,000 is not a sum that changes a farming year. Eleven certificates, a stage in Thanjavur and somebody bothering to name the work are worth something else.