(18 June 1946 –15 January 2021)

Shekhawati’s Son of the Soil has left behind a sprawling Organic Foodprint in India and abroad.

◊ By Mukesh Gupta

Born to a Marwari family of Shekhawati’s Nawalgarh town on 18^th June, 1946, Kamal Morarka, who left his mortal body on January 15 this year, has also left behind a valuable organic food legacy in India and abroad.

His political career and philanthropy notwithstanding, he has given India a culture of organic food production and processing, all in a span of 20 years.

Through his not-for-profit, Morarka Foundation, which he established in 1993, he impacted lakhs of lives using innovations in resource management and capacity building. With the rural support programme, Morarka Foundation has grown over the years and touched many lives.

Unlike other voluntary organisations, Morarka Foundation is involved in more than just the conventional areas of voluntary actions, and has ventured into new avenues, such as Organic Farming and Certifications, Agriculture Extension, Tourism Promotion, Waste Management, Vermicomposting, and Conservation of Heritage.

Morarka Foundation, a pioneer of organic farming in India, has achieved the feat of developing complete value chain management, involving 2,50,000 organic farmers and 200 social entrepreneurs, for over 120 food and non-food crops, including organic textiles.

Products from Morarka Foundation’s flagship brand of organic food, Down To Earth, which has empowered millions of farmers and workers by way of providing employment, are extremely popular among international customers in Canada, the US, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the Middle East.

Kamal Morarka wore many hats in his lifetime—a parliamentarian, an activist, a philanthropist and an organic farming proponent.

He was a Union Minister in the Chandra Shekhar Singh government in 1990-91 and a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan from Janata Dal (Secular) during 1988-94. With a keen interest in sports, he served as Vice President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Vice President of the Rajasthan Cricket Association.

Kamal Morarka believed in reducing the rich-poor disparity by removing social inequality prevalent in caste, religion and community barriers.

He demonstrated the same level of passion in his rural development work with Morarka Foundation.

Through this journey, since inception, the foundation had the unwavering support of this author, who had the honour of aiding Morarka Foundation in reaching new heights through domain expertise.

It is Kamal Morarka’s vision for organic food cultivation in India that has enabled Morarka foundation to grow organic food at 100 plus locations today, covering 19 states and diverse agroclimatic zones in the country, establishing a robust value chain for over 300 organic products, and creating an impressive portfolio of 150 crops.

No one could have imagined that a philanthropic act of rural development in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan two decades ago would become a pan-India movement spanning thousands of villages, and impacting lakhs of farmers.

Kamal Morarka’s demise has not only created a sense of tremendous loss for Morarka Group, but also, the more than 300,000 organic farmers associated with Morarka Foundation and its Down to Earth brand, are bereaved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author is an agricultural expert, and was Director of Operations at Morarka Organic Foods Ltd and Executive Director of Morarka Foundation. He has been part of the organic movement in India since 2002.