Let me start by quoting Mahatma Gandhi as I believe he would garner some respect from people dedicating their time to read this Article
“India’s way is not Europe’s; India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in seven hundred thousand villages.”
“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”
Yes!
We are not in year 2700 to laugh at these quotes, it has just been 60 odd years since we got freedom and we no longer talk about agriculture.
We don’t find pride in naming ourselves a Farming Country!
We want ourselves to be named as the
“Most Happening Nation”, “The Epicenter for Future Economic Development“, “Nuclear Power”
“We fight for freedom for pubs to be open till midnight, we care about what our stars wear, do, and look like, gossips, hell yeah!!” we think and fight for everything that’s just momentary and forget that India still lives in these seven hundred thousand villages. Do we care who lives there ??!, trust me the number is fast shrinking because we spend our time reading who’s building the costliest house in Mumbai.
Media! The most trusted source of information has run its own propaganda for wealth creation, they are no longer vehicles of information, they are firing machine Guns used by vested interests, active 24×7.
“In a nation where 63 % of people rely on agriculture, one full supplement is dedicated for Page 3 crap and less than half a page for agriculture” Media from being generating revenue for proper functioning is on a wild spree to generate more and more income they are now the most aggressive corporate which even the government is afraid to handle, providing Less than 0.5 % coverage in news media related to issues on agriculture.
P. Sainath.
Reason: Money! How many programs are there for agriculture? Who is ready to sponsor those programs? Who is ready to advertise during those programs? How many have you noticed yourself? There is no P.R agency to speak for their cause, There is no Advertising agency to create zoo zoo ads for them, There is no marketing team to rebrand their products, there is no LOGO, there is no AR Rahman tune to download and the ministers appointed to speak on these issues are busy downplaying their corruption charges and investigating investments in IPL teams.
It appears, that there is just no gain in speaking about agriculture.
How would it be when these farmers realize they have been disowned by their own nation for long?
What if they keep what they reap?
What would happen then?
What would happen if they revolt?
Media would run Headlines “Cancer cells surrounding backbone to be removed by government actions” we would witness 24×7 Reality show in News channels.. then some greedy corporate would step in and adopt Agriculture for the welfare of our society! Sigh!
I am writing this for all my friends to realize that Media isn’t working for us. They don’t even need your money; they only need us to be sold to advertisers. We are belittled by media conglomerates. Only our collective power to support genuine Media agencies, which will fight for the majority, can stop this but I am afraid we only have our collective power and nothing else now.
Krzna 
Its wonderful & thought provoking. Hope ppl get inspired by this. The awareness should b spread mainly to the farmers themselves so tht they know truth that v all depend on them n it is dumb to leave for a city just for a bttr job where the environment is also not good compared to the villages. Krzna, try to blog abt organic farming too. Thts the immediate bigger solution here for pollution of the soil! V need to learn a lot from farmers, but the one thing tht they’ve to learn from us urbaneres is “disposal of plastics!” Thanq for this post! 🙂
YVW !! thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
I had been to a village 2 years back and interacted with the farmers personally. Yes, their sons come to cities for better living. Telling them not to is like killing them. The problem lies with the system that has forced them to migrate. We have not grown sustainably. We think that we need to turn villages also into cities and money-making epicentres which won’t work. Farmers themselves told us “yes..if the current situation continues, we ll surely keep what we reap..why should we give anything to the city people who dont even bother about us?”. One more food for thought I would like to add: Farmers are not getting labourers to work in their fields nowadays..And they are not allowed to set prices for what they reap. The prices are determined by middle men, which is in fact not a reasonable price for the farmers themselves.. no proper profit..so they can’t produce according to the demand.. this is one fuckin world where money, a mere non-living paper shows its power! Damn!
yes i agree ! everyones money driven.. it would be great if the farmers can get themselves a lobbyists like nira radia !
actually ppl care about agriculture too much… most of them play farmville regularly…
to be honest, im not sure whether posts like these, debates, news coverages wil do any good to this issue… do something, rather than speakin about it…
true !! people play farmville reap onions there and complain about price rise in real life ! probably they thought agriculture is nothing but a couple mouse clicks ! 😛 hmmm sure i will do something about this ! 🙂
India ranks 67 out of 81 developing and poor countries in the Global Hunger Index. The higher your rank the worse your country is. India is worse than countries like (I included names of countries i have never heard off before) – Gabon(1), Kyrgyz Republic(4), Suriname(18), Swaziland(24), Senegal(34), Benin(38), The Gambia(39), Burkina Faso(44), Malawi(49), Guinea Bissau(52), Togo(56), Lao PDR(57), Djibouti(63). It is even worse than Nepal(54) and Pakistan(59). I thought that India had 9% growth for a decade and is having 8% growth atleast even after the slowdown. We can’t feed our own people and we want to be a Super Power and none of this has been mentioned by the media. We are in serious trouble.
Source – http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi11.pdf
Thanks for sharing information.
It is disheartening to see people being treated this way by our government and we cannot expect too much from corporate controlled media as well. The recent issue of 51 villagers standing in chin-deep water since the 26th of August 2012 is another stinging example and grim reminder of the treatment rendered to our fellow citizens. It is yet to make headlines in corporate media as well.
Its is in our own hands to work together for a better society.
http://www.moneylife.in/article/sovereignty-and-integrity-of-india-in-peril/28535.html
Thanks for sharing the link! An amazing read and a grim reminder of reality!