{"id":8464,"date":"2009-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/11\/18\/ripe-for-the-plucking-but-fewer-dare-to-try\/"},"modified":"2009-11-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T12:00:00","slug":"ripe-for-the-plucking-but-fewer-dare-to-try","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/11\/18\/ripe-for-the-plucking-but-fewer-dare-to-try\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripe For The Plucking, But Fewer Dare To Try"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/18\/world\/asia\/18india.html?hp\">www.nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PETTAH, INDIA, November 16, 2009: As he approaches his first tree of the day, S. Mohan presses his calloused palms together and bows his head. &#8220;Oh God, I am climbing the coconut tree,&#8221; he whispers. &#8220;Protect me from harm.&#8221; One misstep and he would surely fall, as much as 100 feet to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>India produces 15 billion coconuts a year, a tropical bonanza that feeds a billion-dollar industry. Just about every coconut is plucked by hand and every last bit of the tree and its fruit is put to use. <\/p>\n<p>Plucking coconuts is a job that has been in Mr. Mohan&#8217;s family for generations. This was the ancient and seemingly immutable destiny of all sons of a handful of communities here of the Dalit, or untouchable, caste. &#8220;It is a risky job,&#8221; said Mr. Mohan&#8217;s wife, Girija. &#8220;Our people can choose now. Nobody would choose this work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And so Kerala, a relatively prosperous and well-governed state in southern India, is in the grips of an acute shortage of coconut pluckers that threatens to undermine one of its most important industries.<\/p>\n<p>The coconut industry has grappled for years with the problem of how to get nuts from the distant crowns of the tall, slender trees. Kerala&#8217;s state government has responded to the crisis by sponsoring an international design competition that will pay $20,000 to develop three economically feasible coconut-picking machines. <\/p>\n<p>See a slideshow at http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/slideshow\/2009\/11\/17\/world\/20091118-INDIA_index.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.nytimes.com PETTAH, INDIA, November 16, 2009: As he approaches his first tree of the day, S. Mohan presses his,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}