Thursday, January 13, 2011

THE FOOD THE FARMERS GROW (13th Jan 2011)

The first rule of politics is to complicate things beyond the understanding of common man, so that he will always run behind the dangling carrots that the leaders show them with false promises time and again all through his life!

Common Sense has been taken over by greed, more greed and more greed! Who cares as long as long as others are dying and especially the poor! The food, the farmers of the nation grow are in fact self sufficient in many aspects... only if all the food grains reaches to the citizen of the nation in the right ways. The selfless farmers have been feeding the nation since ages with great dedication and devotion... in spite of no proper irrigation facilities and policies of the government, traders mafia, corporate companies’ exploitative methods and not forgetting no proper place of storage for their hard labour which goes in waste due to careless attitude of the government to allow food grains to rot in open storage system and of course with nature turning its back time and again.

Only if the farmers had had a choice to go on strike and boycott growing food grains for a year long period, things definitely would have been different. The Agriculture Sector was once upon a time dominated by 70 per cent Indians and by the next year census, the percentage in all likelihood may fall by another 20 per cent... development and migration is what everyone is talking about but do the farmers of the nation really have any other options?

Their fertile lands are being taken over either by government agencies for government based projects or else by rich corporate companies to establish big industries... and in each case, the false promises of generating employment for the villagers’ card is played. Irrigation projects which should have been given the first and the foremost priority by the nation’s government don’t even complete in two or three decades’ time... instead all the water is diverted to the rich industries... traders selling seeds and fertilizers control the prices by restricting the supply just at the peak season of sowing to extract more money from needy farmers, cost of production is thus increased and the helpless farmers have no other way to turn around.

With more and more people from villages migrating towards cities, less and less villagers are now into farming because farming doesn’t feed their own families... shortage of labour force forces a farmer either to lease out his farms to someone wealthy or needy or else quit farming by selling his land and migrate to the nearby city so that he can struggle all his life doing labour job... at least this way, the farmers don’t have to look after the cattle, worry about increased prices of the seeds and fertilizers or else labour and the uncertainty of the natural calamities or problems of irrigation and still manage to feed his own family to survive in this modern day catastrophe. India is losing a farmer’s family with every next generation because once the son watches his father struggling all his life he opts to leave the age-old profession for better pastures in cities.

Only if the agriculture sector had been taken good care of with proper planning and execution, the sector would have grown in leaps and bounds just like all the other industries... but then, the policy is to create genocide by poisoning the nation’s citizen with poisonous chemical fertilizers and pesticides and GM crops, so that there are more new diseases available for the pharma industries to capitalise by further poisoning us with poisonous pain killers and tablets and injections...

While the agriculture sector has gone from bad to worse in the past six decades, the medical and the pharma industries have grown in leaps and bounds, of course not forgetting the insurance sectors and banking institutions. A simple mechanism is intelligently placed in the villages to trap all the farmers into the debt trap, so that either they will commit suicide or else sell their lands... who cares about food grains production in the nation! Every political leader has his agenda to grab more crores than he or his family can really spend all his life to enjoy life in real sense... but still, they will not hesitate to suck the last drop of blood from the poor farmers...

Farmers of the nation struggle all their life in hot sun, high temperatures and heavy rainfall...  come flood or drought, they selflessly continue farming for the whole nation to live in peace and eat healthy food... some of the farmers in the nation have sold their wives to moneylenders to feed their children during drought in 2009 (Bundelkhand), many farmers have committed suicide all across the nation, food grains are being allowed to rot in open to the tune of 58,000 crores and beyond and the six plus decade young nation never even bothered to build storage godowns to store food grains (only 20 per cent of the total food grains produced in the nation can be stored in FCI godowns)... and all the nation is worried about is industrial growth... more cars, more multiplexes, malls and what not... but what about irrigation system and infrastructure for the most essential sector who feeds the nation???

Dal, onion, vegetables have all been snatched away from a poor man’s plate because of their exorbitant prices... villagers in Tembhali village have to survive their hunger by eating tamarind (imli) leaves and if they get a chance to eat bhakri (roti made of sorghum or rice)... it is the happiest day of their lives... if only the farmers of the nation learn and decide to grow food only for their families and not the nation... only then the government will wake up... the prices of food is directly controlled by the respective leaders and traders lobby while the farmers sweat in hot sun to allow each one of them to suck his blood... till the last drop of blood is sucked from a poor man, the greed of the ever greedy will not satiate!

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