Sunday, March 14, 2010

Farming - A curse in India?

When i was walking back home on 12th march around 9pm , I saw a huge pile of tomatoes lying on the ground and some people fighting with the stray dogs to get the share of those free tomatoes , as i was wondering as to what's happening there i saw a man gloomily looking at the pile.
As usual my curiosity always wins and i asked him what was all the tamasha about,He told that those tomatoes are the one's that was grown in his farm in Magadi(near Bangalore) which he had got and failed to sell as the retailers were not ready to pay even 2rs/kg.As it would cost him more to transport those back he had left it piled up there.
I remembered my attempt at gardening when i was in 3rd standard or so when we were taught about seed germination, My first patch of coriander leaves from soaked seeds are still a fond memory ,why then? How often do you feel proud of a single tomato or even a bean grown in your small vegetable patch.The farmer sitting there would have felt the same pride and pleasure on his patch too, more so when his livelihood depends on it ,but the sad state is he will not be able to support his family with the earning nor would he feel the pride anymore.
Isn't a person like him who will either fall towards suicide,so that he will get a death amount that will at least keep his family alive, or leave the land untilled and search for some unskilled job in cities ,adding another mouth to be fed,instead of feeding several?
What is happening here is sheer injustice , denying a man of basic amenities who not only works hard for his living but is also responsible for filling all our bellies.
What is our, for the people, by the people ,to the people,government doing on this one ? Right since i was a kid i have always seen that the best thing they do is to waive off farmer loans or announce certain amount of money on death of farmer who commits suicide.
Is it really benefiting the farmer is a question to be asked.. Instead of loan waiver which would mainly help landlords/plantation owners(As i really doubt whether our banks give loans to small scale farmers who really need it), wouldn't fixing a fair price for all food grains/vegetables etc help them ?
Wouldn't a easier method to buy all their products from the farm directly avoid the pain they have to go through ,transporting ,dealing with the middle men ?
Wouldn't usage of cold storage or appropriate storage mechanism after buying help ,Instead of talking about some bullshit story of BT seeds which will make the farmer dependent on others for yet another parameter(How often do you read in news that the government doesn't have enough stock to supply fertilizers/water/current to farmers? It will next be the turn of seeds if this is allowed!)
Is it so difficult to carry out some measures, when it is a question of lives of crore's of people who depend on agriculture ,also noting that at the end we all need food to live and it is a matter of our nation's self sufficiency too?
Now if anyone says forget government there are countless NGO's and microfinance which helps them finance the question we need to ask is are they really helping,as we read many many scandals..
At the end of this write up the problem of those countless farmer still exists and there is some farmer drinking the pesticide to kill the weeds to kill himself of all the miseries he is facing abandoning his wife and kids to the mercy of fate..

10 comments:

  1. The problem is systemic, Mythri. It's been from the beginning, in our approach to development and growth. We are a billion plus nation and year is 2010, and still nearly half or more of the population lives in rural areas and is dependent agri-based activities. I can't help myself but remember the words of Sir M.V.
    "Industrialize or Perish".
    He knew, in modern era, agriculture can not be depended as regular and sustainable source for growth and development for majority of population. Most developed nations went through the changes something like this-
    Agricultural economy--> Manufacturing Economy--> Service Economy.

    So when it happens, large labor force from agriculture gets trained in industrial skills and then they and/or the next generation workers migrate into service sector.

    We missed the bus of manufacturing, which was needed for massive industrialization of our society. And the result is you see huge pile of tomatoes lying on the ground and some people fighting with the stray dogs to get the share of those free tomatoes.




    Neo

    ReplyDelete
  2. And one more thing.
    Please go through a book called, "STARTUP NATION: ISRAEL". In the introduction, there is a quote from Shimon Peres-
    "Nice speech, but what are you going to do?"

    Our government, sometime ago signed agreement to learn agriculture from Israel, who have so little land, and are just 60 years old. They are just about the size of Bangalore (70-80 lakh). And they provide us technologies, our DRDO can only dream of building. It's more about attitude, than resources that makes a person or a society successful.

    How action oriented we are? How committed we are to achieve results? It's very easy to blame government or some other people for failure. But how many people are ready to take plunge to look for exact reason and solve the problem rather than pointing fingers?

    It's truly of the people, by the people and for the people.
    It boils down to simple questions like these.


    What am I going to do?


    What are you going to do?



    Neo

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Neo :First of all thanks for reading and commenting on all my rambles :)
    second I myself have mentioned that this is just a speech and does no diff to lives of those..
    Third Does missing a bus stop you from reaching destination ?Then why should it for a country?
    Fourth : Thanks for all the other info ,will read it when i get my hands on it :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Agriculture is subject to periodic fluctuations mainly due to the length of the supply chain like you pointed out. Nowadays many companies like ITC, Reliance are buying directly from the farmer.
    The main reason why such things happen is due to unavailability of information about the demand and lack of industries in the rural areas. The same tomatoes instead of dumping may be converted into ketchup.
    Many companies are trying to get into this area but there are vested interests who are trying to stop that

    ReplyDelete
  5. Immediately after you wrote blog this article came out
    http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15663767&source=hptextfeature

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Ro thanks for ur comment,checked ur article yes it deals with the problem to quite an extent :), also reliance fresh et all but still way to go ! . (Btw tomatoes was just an ex ;-)).

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice Article....but still it is in wordings but not working our in reality?

    "Moksha endu namma raitharige"

    Being a girl understanding of farmer life

    India means agriculture and agriculture means India...

    From Mahadev
    ckmahadev@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  9. Are you a professional photographer?
    And Kunchasamaya is your hand work?

    Thumba chennagide...Keep it up...

    Article with kannada and english combination giving taste for reading...

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Mahadeva : Thanks for reading, No im not a pro photographer and yes kuchasamaya is my hand work..

    ReplyDelete

 
Visit blogadda.com to discover Indian blogs