Soil Health, National Wealth: India’s Silent Infrastructure Crisis is a thought-provoking and interdisciplinary book that highlights the critical yet often overlooked role of soil in national development. It presents soil not merely as a farming input, but as a living, dynamic infrastructure essential for water regulation, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience. Drawing on decades of scientific research, field experience, and policy analysis, the book emphasizes the growing gap between soil management policies and ground realities in India.

It critically examines issues such as declining soil organic carbon, groundwater depletion, and increasing dependence on chemical inputs, arguing for a shift toward sustainable and system-based soil health management. The book integrates insights from agrometeorology, climate science, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to propose modern solutions like soil health mapping and carbon accounting. Inspired by global soil science leaders, it calls for treating soil as a national asset crucial for long-term agricultural and environmental sustainability.

Chapter 1. The Living Engine: Soil as Biological Technology
Chapter 2. The Indian Soil Map We Don’t Have
Chapter 3. Forty Years of Extraction
Chapter 4. The Water Connection
Chapter 5. What Infrastructure Actually Means
Chapter 6. The Grid Model: How We Can Manage Soil Like Electricity
Chapter 7. The Soil Balance Sheet: Why Carbon is Our Real Reserve
Chapter 8. The Empirical Reality: Evidence from the Field
Chapter 9. The Mapping Mandate: A Digital Twin for India’s Soil
Chapter 10. Standards, Not Mandates: The Architecture of Choice
Chapter 11. The National Soil Microbiome Mission (NSMM)
Chapter 12. The Carbon Dividend: Turning Soil into Capital
Chapter 13. State Responsibility and Central Standards
Chapter 14. Countries That Got This Right: Adopting Global Best Practices
Chapter 15. The 25-Year Restoration Agenda (2025–2050)