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A couple of months ago, it was potato farmers in Bengal committing suicide. Then, a farmer from Rajasthan hanged himself at a political rally. Another jumped in front of a train. As the media reports all this in a frenzy, politicians are busy engaged in their usual mudslinging. People hanker to know everything about the farmers, and their sorrowing families will be shown on television screens. While the Delhi government is being criticised for not acting quickly enough to prevent the suicide at its rally, the AAP suggests it’s a BJP conspiracy! And Rahul Gandhi says it all happened because of the ordinance that has been introduced by the BJP. And, we have a Union minister offering pearls of wisdom to farmers about gods and governments!
No one sees the farmers’ point of view. Behind these suicides lies an explosive cocktail of natural and manmade factors — crop loss caused by erratic weather, deficient monsoon, a depleting water table, procurement woes, inefficient policies with respect to taxes and loans, and the deadly tentacles of private moneylenders. So what, say a majority of the urban population, they get free electricity, water supply, waiver of loans and all that!! Yes, but are these packages doing enough to address the plight of farmers? And how many farmers have access to ‘free’ power/water? Do these limited sops do anything for crop yield, farm inputs/loans, assured irrigation, developing cold storage, marketing/pricing facilities?
It is high time the government tweaked its agri-trade policies and the farmers, instead of being provided with meaningless incentives or false assurances, were educated on crop insurance as well as alternative sources of income such as algaculture, mushroom farming, shrimp/prawn farming, dairy farming, poultry, fisheries, and so on.
As my son recites a couplet from the Thirukkural which roughly translates as “The reign of many kingdoms comes under the reign of those with abundant grain”, I think of the movie Peepli Live and smile wryly.
Senior Sub-Editor
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