'OLX pe bech de' has the correct timing for its campaign since it has had many new products to be sold. The latest of them being Ishant Sharma (First get him a barber!) Even Ajit Agarkar, who recently retired would have second thoughts on that decision after watching that abject display of bowling, or shall i say 'Ball Feeding' to James Faulkner. But more on prince 'Hairy' on a later date.
It is said that the one who feeds us deserves utmost respect in our lives. But that farmer who creates that grain to fill the country’s 121 billion stomachs by slogging day in and day out is languishing today in a pitiful condition. Really pitiful. Let alone respect, he is barely able to make ends meet!
Maharashtra, apart from Mumbai and Pune, to a certain extent is an agro- based state. Most of its revenue is generated through the sale of cotton and other seasoned crops which grow on a large scale in the state. The region of Vidharba is the states prime agricultural belt and the most cursed one too. The farmer here is heavily dependent on the rain gods for the success of his crop due to poor irrigation facilities inspite of crores of rupees being sanctioned for the same. I guess it’s our ministers homes that are being irrigated through that money!
The country in the past decade and a half (1995 – 2011) has seen over a quarter of a million of farmers committing suicides in Vidharba and the regions nearby as they were unable to handle the debt that they had taken. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) places the exact figure to be 2, 56,913 – 15,964 in 2010 itself. People all over the country have been rattled reading about farmer suicides every other day but all their pleas have ultimately fallen on deaf ears, like every other plea or cry for help in our country does.
One such case was of Kalavati, the one who became a symbol of resurgence when she was mentioned by the AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi in a moving speech in the Lok Sabha in 2008 that earned her the 15 minutes of fame. But that was all. Her condition still remains the same or infact worse as members of her family are continuing to commit suicide due to extreme poverty. Someone might have not told Mr. Gandhi that speeches can help people earn sympathy, but it can’t fill their hungry bellies.
Inspite of working from 8 in the morning to as long as 6 in the evening on their own farms and even as labourers on other’s farms, all these farmers (most of them are women as their husbands committed suicides) earn only as much as Rs. 1500 a month! It is sad to see that a government with a top notch economist at the helm is unable to figure out a solution to resolve their plight. There may be countless such Kalavati’s all over the country, but unfortunately there is no one to listen to them.
Solution: banks could be more lenient in allotting loans to the farmers so that they don’t need to turn to the portly and greedy moneylenders – a character immortalized by the likes of Prem Chopra and Kanhiyalal in our Hindi Films. It is reported that these moneylenders charge interest as high as 40 – 50%, something which makes it almost improbable for the farmers to pay back the loan. Also, middlemen could be abolished so that the farmer can sell the crop directly to the government and that half of his income is not usurped by him.
Our farmer was once the symbol of our country but today he lies in abject poverty, on the verge of death, and slowly fading into oblivion if prompt action isn’t taken!
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