My house is burning.
Can I douse the fire by putting just a bucket of water?
Or should I try to put all my effort into mitigating the catastrophe?
An engineer by profession, Raghuveer worked with Wipro Technologies from Oct 2007 to Oct 2012. He had a deep desire to pursue a career in movie direction and production. So he left his well paying job to pursue his passion.
But something else was in store for him.
He was in pain to see the monopoly of few individuals as they controlled the supply of native paddy seeds in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. When power gets accumulated in the hands of a select few, the weaker section of society suffers.
For the next 3 years he traveled all corners of the country to collect different seeds.
He went to Rayagada in Odisha to meet eminent ecologist Dr Debal Deb. At his conservation farm named Basudha, Dr Deb has conserved 1,480 traditional rice varieties and shared those for free with over 7,600 farmers.
While staying at Basudha, Raghuveer learnt the urgency to save our indigenous rice varieties. He returned to his hometown Vijayawada after staying there for 1 month.
He has spent the last 6-7 years doing research in this field and 4 years in actual farming.
He has received “Best Farmer Award” from Sri Singireddy Niranjan Reddy, Honourable Agriculture minister of Telangana.
He also featured in a book named “Prakruthi Sainyam” featuring “100 Inspirational Farmers”.
This year he received the “Plant Genome Saviour Farmer Award” from none other than Honorable President of India Smt Droupadi Murmu.
Raghuveer believes his activism aims at empowering local farmers of our country.
He continues to follow his passion for independent movie making for which he had left his well paying job in 2012. He travels to different film festivals in India to learn more about the art of movie making. One day he dreams of taking his debut movie to international film festivals and making a mark at the world stage.
The following quote sums up his life’s philosophy and drives anything that he aims to do in future.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
About his journey, he shared these nuggets of wisdom before signing off.
“Started with just one seed
Many laughed
Some questioned
A few criticized
But a handful encouraged
And I took everything in my stride and moved on…”