Any development process that we engage ourselves in should be
aimed at bringing happiness to the lower strata of our Society, who
today are deprived of the most fundamental needs of food, work, shelter,
health and education. If a large majority of our population sleeps
hungry every day, what is the point of trumpeting loudly about our GDP
growth? If extensive migration from village continues unabated in search
of invisible work to overcrowded cities, how irrelevant is the talk
about India becoming a superpower.
The destruction of rural harmony and
substituting it by urban disorder, slums and pollution makes a mockery
of our claim to be a “Shining” or “Incredible” India. What the
continuing direction of so-called development has produced is making the
vast majority, specially in rural countryside, helpless, miserable,
virtual beggars with loss of self-esteem and self-confidence. With all
the talk of planned growth and socialistic pattern of society in the
first 40 years after independence and with reversal of direction to free
market and globalization in the subsequent 20 years, what we have
proudly achieved is a fragmented and divided society with power and
wealth in hands of unscrupulous few who are free to exploit the majority
on the plea of taking the country forward. Look around you and we find a
dirty India, an unhappy India, a miserable India, a divided India, a
directionless India, an India devoid of its morals, traditions and
moorings, a rootless India! It makes feel like crying – what have the
leaders, the learned, the educated, the intelligent people done to this
country that was once the Jewel of the East?
But let us not
despair. All is not lost particularly amongst the youth. They only need
to be told the truth, the facts and what the future holds for them.
Their future is at stake and they cannot sit idly, helpless and allow
the deterioration to take place. They will ACT.
What do we need
to do?
A. Food Security With Farmers’ Security
First and
foremost, knowing that a large majority of our population lives in the
rural countryside and is dependent on agriculture for a living (don’t we
all want food to keep alive?), we have to concentrate first on
developing and investing in agriculture. The government moans the fact
that agriculture growth is only 2% whereas industrial growth is 8 to 9%
and hence3 justifies further investment in industry. It wants the people
to believe that we can eat steel if we do not get food.
In this context, it is pertinent to mention that today the
government policy is to augment agriculture productivity by –
- Aggressively promoting rice and wheat cultivation at the expense
of other beneficial and healthy crops.
- Marketing
laboratory-developed high-priced high-yielding hybrid paddy and wheat
seeds that require heavy inputs of fertilizers, urea and water.
- Providing loans to farmers for purchase of above items and giving
fertilizer subsidies.
- Periodically waiving off farm loans.
- Shedding crocodile tears on farmers’ suicides due to excessive debt
All the above actions, whoever thought of them, have resulted in
increasing poverty of farmers, infertility of farmland due to excessive
chemical inputs, disappearance of our biodiversity on the farm through
systematic disappearance of jwar, madua and other crop grains,
promoted monoculture resulting in malnutrition, put farmers in debt on
account of forced seed and fertilizer purchase, etc. The list is endless
and the final result is – today the farmer is hungry and tomorrow we all
will be hungry.
Our farmlands are shrinking replaced by large
industries, airports, highways, expanding urban centers, malls, SEZ’s,
etc. In fact our leaders want to urbanize villages and import the food
that we need for our sustenance. How foolish can you get?
Our
farmlands are becoming infertile by excessive government promotion and
use of fertilizers and pesticides necessitated by high yielding rice and
wheat seeds developed by our “dedicated” laboratories and research
teams.
Our farmers are getting deeper and deeper in debt because
even before they can produce any crop, they have to buy seeds, buy
fertilizers, buy pesticides and for all this take loans. With stress on
monoculture of rice and wheat, they have to depend on market to sell the
rice and wheat they grow (they have to purchase other food items from
market to make a full meal). Markets are always cruel to the weaker
sections and hence the farmer returns with less income than what he
invested. And if Rain God is angry (where is the guarantee of water
through planned irrigation?), the farmer is desolate and destroyed.
The net result of shrinking farmland, infertility of soil and the
destroyed farmer is less food for all of us and then the only
alternative is to pray to God to save us all!
The alternate
development path is clear. First stop what we are doing. Then go back
(nay forward in real sense) to how we were doing farming 70 or 80 or 90
years back.
We had indigenous seeds then of our own developed
by nature over centuries which we preserved and stored for farming so
that we never paid for seeds. We made organic manure with nature’s help
to add fertility to soil and again we did not pay for such fertilizers.
We grew variety of crops and vegetables so that we had a healthy diet
and did not have to depend on the market. We also grew what we ate and
ate what we grew.
In addition, today we have developed organic
methods of farming and manure making that increase overall agriculture
productivity not just for one crop or two but over a wide range of our
produce.
The soil remains fertile or even increases its
fertility, no loan is taken by farmer for farming, farmer eats a healthy
mixed diet, and agriculture production as a whole increases adding to
the food security of the nation. Is this a dream? Of course not.
Examples are plenty in India where by following this, farmers are happy
and growing a variety of crops in abundance for our nation. It is such a
crime and an irony that in today’s India. The farmer who grows our crops
and feeds us city folks has to sleep hungry and ultimately commits
suicide. Are we so dumb and insensitive?
What I have said above
is supported by the following –
- “Is Alternative Agriculture
Revolutionary?” – an article by Rajinder Chaudhary contained in
Alternative Economic Survey, India 2007-2008 by Alternative Survey Group
entitled “Decline of the Developmental State”, published in 2008 by
Daanish Books, Delhi
- “End of India Farmers” – an article under the
title “Growth and Equity : Policy Demands, Commitments and Performance”,
contained in Citizens’ Report on Governance and Development 2008-2009 by
Social Watch India, published in 2009 by Daanish Books, Delhi
- “Why
is Every 4th Indian Hungry?” – a book by Dr. Vandana Shiva and Kunwar
Jalees, published in 2009 by Navdanya, Delhi
We have to say NO to
:
- Hybrid and genetic seeds
- Monoculture in farming
- Fertilizers and pesticides
- All government propaganda in support of
above
We have to say YES to :
- Indigenous seeds
- Multi-crop bio-diversity in farming
- Improved organic manure making
- Improved organic farming methods
- Freeing ourselves from the
market
This will only result in food security in the long run for
the nation. Anything less, we are fooling ourselves.
B. Rural Industrialization
The second point we
have to tackle in our alternate development process is creation of
employment and increasing earning potential of rural sector to
supplement farming income. This only will stop rural migration to
cities. Jobs have to be created in villages, not in cities, and giving
doles through various Government Schemes has to stop. We do not have to
make our rural population beggars at the mercy of the Government (isn’t
that what NREGA has done?) but give them work and employment
opportunities so that they are masters of their destiny. In short, we
have to produce an army of rural entrepreneurs in our villages through
agro-processing in tiny and small scale sectors.
But first,
villages must get electricity – not through large power plants (their
power is invariably reserved for cities) but through tiny and small
power generating units such as micro-thermal and micro-hydro power
plants, small solar plants, small wind mills, and such units – all such
power generation owned, operated and maintained by villagers themselves.
The real power then is in their hands.
Is the above possible? Why
not? If a man can land on the moon, why not small economically viable
power units, if we put our brains behind it and back it with funds,
determination and commitment.
With power available both for
lighting and for small industrial units, one can think of :
- Tiny oil mills
- Tiny rice mills
- Tiny flour mills
- Tiny jaggery (gur) making machines
- Tiny potato chips making units
and many such agro-based units – not food parks, not large
mechanized units – but small individual machines in multiples promoting
larger employment and earning base as well as making the village
self-sufficient. They do not have to buy oil, they produce their own;
they don’t buy flour, they make their own; they don’t buy harmful sugar,
they produce their own beneficial employment and
earning and a spirit of self-dependency inculcated in the village
community.
Today for all areas of agro-based manufacturing, there
are small and tiny sector plants that are equally efficient in producing
quality goods.
We need to promoter aggressively and
unapologetically tiny and small that creates jobs not unemployment,
creates earnings for all not just for few, conserves and protects not
destroys and pollutes nature.
What all
the above means that we need to halt the pace of urban development and
focus instead on rural areas where the large majority of neglected poor
but wise and honest people are desperately eking out a living. The rich
need to be neglected for the moment (they had their fill) for the
benefit of the poor. Otherwise, the day is not far off when clashes,
violence and bloodshed due to glaring disparities will occur
uncontrolled and unabated.
Real India resides in villages, the
First India is our Farmer and this has to be our focus of alternative
development. Make the Farmer our King, make the Villager our Master and
restore the balance in the society. Village still preserves our age old
culture (we call them backward) and India has survived centuries because
of our values, traditions and time-tested practices. Let us not give all
this away at the false glitter and glamour of westernization put in the
garb of modernization.
We will then win and so will our youth! We
do not want to become superpower, we want to be super happy!
September 27, 2009
