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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Safety First

The death of two people and injuries to five others after a 22-foot Ganesh idol collapsed during its arrival ceremony in Mumbai is a deeply disturbing accident. It is particularly unfortunate that such an incident should occur barely three weeks before Ganeshotsav begins on September 14. A festival that is synonymous with devotion, community and celebration must not begin under such a gloomy shadow. The incident took place in Bhuleshwar, as the idol of Bhuleshwaracha Raja was being...

Safety First

The death of two people and injuries to five others after a 22-foot Ganesh idol collapsed during its arrival ceremony in Mumbai is a deeply disturbing accident. It is particularly unfortunate that such an incident should occur barely three weeks before Ganeshotsav begins on September 14. A festival that is synonymous with devotion, community and celebration must not begin under such a gloomy shadow. The incident took place in Bhuleshwar, as the idol of Bhuleshwaracha Raja was being transported from Byculla to its pandal. Preliminary information points to the unravelling of loose nuts and bolts in the idol’s supporting frame. Whatever the final findings of the investigation, the fact remains that a structure weighing many tonnes and being moved through a crowded urban neighbourhood cannot be allowed to become a lethal hazard. The prompt mobilisation of the Mumbai Fire Brigade, Mumbai Police, traffic police, 108 ambulance service and civic ward staff deserves recognition. But emergency response, however efficient, is no substitute for prevention. By the time emergency services arrive, lives may already have been lost. That is the lesson Mumbai and Maharashtra must absorb before the festival begins. Ganeshotsav is among the biggest public celebrations in the state. Its arrival processions draw enormous crowds, with towering idols, decorated vehicles, music, electrical installations and devotees converging on narrow streets. The scale of the celebrations has grown dramatically, but safety practices must grow with it. Every Ganesh pandal preparing for this year’s festival should treat structural safety as seriously as religious and logistical arrangements. Frames, fasteners, lifting equipment, transport vehicles and securing mechanisms must be inspected by competent personnel before an idol is moved. Organisers should not assume that a structure is safe simply because it has been used before. A single loose bolt can have catastrophic consequences. The authorities, too, cannot leave safety entirely to organisers. Civic agencies should conduct systematic inspections of large idols and their transportation arrangements, particularly where processions pass through densely populated areas. Traffic management, crowd control, overhead electrical infrastructure and emergency access routes need to be planned in advance. Safety checks should be mandatory, documented and meaningful, not just a box-ticking exercise. There is still time to act. The accident should be treated not merely as an isolated mishap but as a warning. Maharashtra has barely three weeks to ensure that every major pandal and procession has robust safety protocols in place. Ganeshotsav should begin with faith, excitement and the unmistakable sense of a city coming together and not with the memory of preventable deaths. The best tribute to those who lost their lives in Bhuleshwar would be to ensure that no family has to suffer such grief during the celebrations ahead.

The Farm Goes Quantum

From monsoon prediction to smarter supply chains, quantum computing could give Maharashtra’s agriculture a new technological edge.

AI generated image
AI generated image

Indian agriculture is approaching the limits of what conventional computing can comfortably handle. The modern farm is no longer governed by rainfall and soil alone. It sits at the intersection of increasingly volatile weather, crop biology, input prices, pest behaviour, transport networks and global markets. The challenge is not simply to collect more data, but to make sense of enormous numbers of variables at once. That is where quantum computing could eventually offer an advantage.


Quantum machines, using principles such as superposition and entanglement, are designed to tackle certain classes of complex optimisation and simulation problems in ways that conventional computers cannot. For agriculture, the promise is about solving problems that remain prohibitively difficult even for powerful classical systems. Maharashtra, with its unusual combination of technological capacity and agricultural scale, is well placed to explore that frontier.


Haber-Bosch Process

One of the most intriguing applications lies beneath the soil. Fertiliser production depends heavily on the Haber-Bosch process, which is energy-intensive and contributes substantially to global emissions. Nature has a more elegant solution. Soil microbes use the enzyme nitrogenase to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form that plants can use under relatively mild conditions. Understanding the enzyme's intricate molecular behaviour could help scientists design catalysts that reproduce aspects of natural nitrogen fixation. Quantum simulation may eventually make such calculations more tractable, potentially opening the door to cleaner and cheaper fertiliser technologies.


That is still a research challenge, rather than a technology that farmers can buy today. But it illustrates why quantum computing matters to agriculture. Some of the sector's biggest gains may come not from putting a quantum computer on a farm, but from using quantum-enabled research to change what goes into the farm in the first place.


The same principle applies after harvest. Maharashtra’s agricultural economy is spread across very different geographies, from the high-rainfall Konkan region to the drought-prone parts of Marathwada and Vidarbha. Moving crops, inputs and other commodities efficiently across such a large and diverse landscape is a formidable optimisation problem. Advanced algorithms could help coordinate thousands of variables involving routes, inventories, demand and storage capacity which can result in lower transport costs, better matching of supply with markets and less produce lost between the farm and the consumer.


Better Prediction

Farmers do not need generic forecasts; they need information relevant to a particular crop, location and stage of cultivation. More powerful computational models could combine atmospheric, soil, satellite and historical data to produce increasingly localised forecasts and risk assessments. For a state where agriculture remains acutely exposed to rainfall variability, even incremental improvements in prediction could have substantial economic value.


Maharashtra has an important advantage in attempting this experiment. Few Indian states combine a sizeable technology ecosystem with such a large and institutionally organised agricultural economy. The Mumbai-Pune-Nagpur corridor provides access to technology companies, engineering talent, research institutions and data infrastructure. At the other end are established cooperative networks in sectors such as sugar, dairy and cotton. These networks could become important channels for taking sophisticated technological insights to dispersed producers.


The state’s geographical diversity is another asset. A technology tested across Maharashtra's nine agro-climatic zones would encounter an unusually broad range of conditions. Solutions capable of working across Konkan’s humidity, western Maharashtra’s irrigated agriculture and the semi-arid interior would have obvious relevance elsewhere in India.


Institutions such as the Maharashtra Institution for Transformation (MITRA) could help bridge the gap between promising laboratory research and practical deployment. Quantum technology will not transform agriculture merely because quantum computers exist. It will require datasets, digital infrastructure, skilled personnel, research partnerships and, crucially, mechanisms through which farmers can actually use the resulting intelligence.


There is a temptation to describe quantum computing as a technological magic wand capable of eliminating crop failures and doubling incomes. Agriculture is too complicated for such certainties. Although technology can reduce risk, it cannot repeal weather or biology. Quantum computing itself remains an emerging field, and many of its most consequential applications are still being developed.


But that is precisely why Maharashtra should begin experimenting now. The objective should be to build a system in which farmers benefit from quantum-enabled advances in weather intelligence and crop science.


Agriculture has spent decades becoming more mechanised and more data-driven. Its next transformation may be computational. And Maharashtra has the ingredients for that transition.


 (The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.)

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