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This is with reference to "When will farmers earn as much as the lowliest government employees?" (Business Line, January 3). This refrain of deliberately shrinking the number of farms, increasing the size of individual holdings and moving the rest of the farmers to city-based jobs has become common nowadays. This is in fact the Mansholt Plan of the 1960s. This model failed even in the sparsely populated countries of the Europe. India and China have a population problem and need to make intelligent use of land and related resources to improve the farmer's lot. We simply cannot move more people from villages into the already crowded cities. And most farmers are not educated. What is needed is alternative ways of providing employment to the farmer in the village.

Balaji Shankar

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