Agriculture - The future of India

Gandhiji's these words are as true today as they were 70 years back. Might be in numbers we have moved to 31% urban population, but we should not forget that close to 70% of 1.2 billion population is a huge number. Huge enough that if we ignore them we ignore our future...our progress...our souls..

Also, another fact that have not changed in so many years is that villages are still dependent on agriculture. Agriculture is not just the most risky business but also tests the best values of human being. It teaches them to be patient, optimistic and hopeful. But since long we have neglected this empowering profession.

For long time even I was fascinated by other professions like medical, engineering, administration etc. I gave secondary status to farming as I thought those who can't excel in other fields end up in farming. But now I realize how naive I was. I seldom realized that its the strong foundation of agriculture on which others build. If the foundation shakes it can take everything else along with it.

If we look historically, we can better appreciate the importance of agriculture. Indian continent could witness its first ever civilization - Indus Valley civilization just because people from Mehrgarh area shifted to fertile land of Indus. Here they could generate surplus. This surplus enabled certain section of society to engage in trade and commerce. Then started the whole chain of surplus -> trade and commerce -> cities -> more trade and commerce -> bigger cities. In such big and intermingled chain  of events what we more appreciate is the cities and planning knowledge of Harappans. What we often miss is the great role played by agricultural surplus. Decline of Harappan civilization may be explained by many reasons but the most accepted view clearly underlines the imbalance created due to decline in agricultural production. That might have been due to river shifting or soil deterioration, that's not my point here, the important point is that agricultural production imbalance took with itself the millennium old civilization. It took another one and half millennium to reach such status of agricultural surplus so as to support another urbanization.

If I summarize in few words then M.S. Swaminathan's words resonate in my ears " if agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right in our country".  

What I often wonder is if agriculture is so important then why do we accord so low status to it? Or why have we neglected it so far? I accorded secondary status to it because I was lacking a holistic view and also I had limited knowledge then. But I guess this is not the case with our policy makers. They are far read and experienced. Then why such dismal state? I have observed a list of problems in this sector, but for now I will start with a small incident. In my next writing I will jot down the ground level problems as observed by me and would pray that I get a chance in life to solve them. Let's see the story part first. 

I got married around 2 years back. At that time my in-laws completed harvesting and got moong at home. At that time moong was getting sold at around 7k. Within few days prices started falling. My in-laws thought it may be because of bumper production so they waited for right time. It has been around 2 years and right time never came. Currently the prices are around 4k. Now this may seem like a usual business case study in which demand-supply mismatch happened and prices of commodity saw downfall. However, if I mention other events of these 2 years then we will realize how economics failed in agriculture either due to poor policy or poor implementation of good policy. 

These events included:

1. Back to back drought in country due to El-nino

2. Huge pulses inflation , especially in cities. In Delhi I was buying moong dal at Rs 160/kg. when my in-laws were compelled to sell at Rs 50-60/Kg

3. Huge import of pulses from foreign. Indian government also signed many MoU with countries like Mozambique to maintain pulses supply.

There were many other like export ban on pulses, application of Essential commodities Act on pulses etc. Point is not that, what I want to emphasize is how come producer was not getting benefited when consumption demand was high and supply was limited. I read in my first economics chapter that demand-supply cycle decides the best price. In this both consumer as well as producers benefit. Then how come in agriculture, especially in case of moong farmers were getting no benefit from huge demand? 

On one hand even with huge supply and production of wheat farmers of Punjab and Haryana get handsome return (through high MSP) while on other hand, farmers of pulses in Rajasthan are not even able to recover their input. Worrisome part is that this condition exists when we are forced to import pulses closes to world's total pulses trade.

I will give the long answer in my next article but the short answer is that in Indian agriculture not economics but politics works. 

                                                                                                                                            Continued...

Various "ism" in life

I know the title itself is very mysterious. Let me make it clear in starting itself. By various "ism" I mean various ideologies that surround us and in many cases puzzles us. It includes 20th century buzz words - socialism, communism , nationalism etc. as well as recent-often-heard word: Feminism. May be the core of every ideology is somewhat clearly spelled , but there are so many connotations and modifications to each that it puzzles a common man deeply to find out what is actually correct.

I choose to pen down my thoughts on 2 very "hot ism" these days : Nationalism and Feminism. I will not divulge into defining these , I will just share my experiences and leanings about these two. Let me start with Nationalism.

The very first thing I want to say about Nationalism is that its not patriotism. Although both describe relationship between an individual and nation but there lays wide range of difference. The most apt difference has been described by Sydney Harris



In very layman language I will tell a story often told by my husband. Assume an Indian , say Arun go to another country He go to buy mangoes there. By looking at the mangoes Arun says " We have got better variety mangoes in India." The seller took it on his (or his country's) pride and said " these are the best variety in world and I challenge you India's can be no better" The seller was arguing all the time in-spite of his no knowledge about the variety of mangoes in world, which country has best variety etc. A passing by person, say X(i),  hear the conversation. He talks to Arun and request him to accompany him.  X(i) takes him to a near by shop, buy the best variety mango for him and handover to Arun. Instead of asking for money he ask for his forgiveness to the ignorance of the seller.  Also he request Arun to courier some best variety mango seeds to him so that he can also try cultivating them here so that even his country can become the best.

Here comes the difference between a nationalist and a patriot. In this story, seller was a nationalist because he considers his country best. On other hand X(i) is a patriot because he is aspiring to make his country best. X(i) took responsibility to work for his country.  Responsibility is what I consider, separates the thin line between patriotism and nationalism. I also consider that most people, especially Indians, are afraid of taking responsibilities. And this is the reason people slip into blanket of nationalism to show their love for country.

We shy from taking responsibility to improve our education system , we shy from taking responsibility to create an equal society , we shy from taking responsibility to at-least create one world class level university or research center. What can be more sad that we even shy from taking responsibility of changing mindset of our son, brother, father  or husband to shed them of patriarchy.
The day we will start taking responsibility, we will start looking at ways to improve our current positions. The day we will start looking at ways, we will open ourselves to others, The day we will start opening to others , we will start respecting diversity and they day we start respecting diversity, we will become true Indians. We will together strive to be patriots then. I guess on that day we will not like someone calling us just nationalists. We would like to be recognized as patriots.

Love is a great , Love for nation is honorable. But always remember love is antithetic to hate and as law of nature goes, two antithetic feelings can't coexist. So love for our country can't coexist with hate for other countries, love for our nation can't coexist with hate for our countrymen. If you find somewhere in past (or present), where love and hate coexisted, believe me that was not love. That was madness taking nations to wars and communities to riots. Such wars and riots produced no success. Only losses were there and the worst sufferer was humanism.

With Humanism we land up to third "ism" and also my favorite one. Out of all "ism" the one which has never changed its form and importance is humanism. Humanism is the belief that all human beings are good by nature and only circumstances make them bad, its the belief that all human beings are equal and must be loved for being born as human being. It transgress all divisions and is much above the talks of politics, self interest, protectionism etc. It just teaches one thing - open you arms for every human being. We all must practice humanism and then I believe patriotism, nationalism etc will be automatically taken care of.

                                                                                                                                        Jai Hind

What holds this great nation back

Guest Post

India is country which holds the distinction of having the second largest agricultural land in the world only after America. There is no dearth of mineral resources in the country whether it is iron, coal, manganese or limestone, we have enough of all these. Moreover, according to recent World Bank Report half of India’s 1.2 billion people are under the age of 26, and by 2020, it is forecast to be the youngest country in the world, with a median age of 29 . Ours is the oldest living civilization in the world with treasure of cultural heritage and civilizational values. Our country is lucky to have leaders of global standing in past as well as in present. People like Buddha, Mahaveer, Vivekananda , Gandhi and Nehru are born in our country who not only had influence on people of India, but also had great following worldwide.

Thus we have all ingredients which are required for making a nation great,  like physical and human resources, leaders who guided us on path of progress and values which make us humane and civilized. It is not that our country is not great but it far short of its rightful place in path of human progress.

Despite of having all these , there are many dark spots on the face of this beautiful nation which are shaping the perception as well as reality of our country. Still there  are 300 million people who are living below poverty line. Every year thousands of farmer do suicides. A country which had 25% share in world GDP and was the largest exporter of manufactured goods few year back, is struggling to find its position among top 10 in world trade. These are not the characteristics of the greatest civilization in the world. Everyday these realities intrigue me and many others who wish to see this nation again as world leaders in every aspect of life.

So where are we lagging behind? What all things which are creating friction for wheel of the progress ? Why are we not able to end poverty, become global manufacturing hub and gain our rightful position in Human Development Index?

There are many answers to these question depending on the way we look at the problem and possible solution. But according to me the problem lies in software. The hardware is pretty robust in our country. There are three biggest challenges which this country is facing : Castiesm, tolerance to injustice and corruption. I will be talking about last two in coming articles. In this article I will focus on the first one which is more relevant in today’s context due to politically charged environment.

I would like to explain the gravity of this problem of casteism through a story from Ancient India. We all know about the greatest warrior and brave soul Porus who fought against Alexander when he invaded India. Alexander was so impressed with his courage that he returned all the territory which he won from Porous and even gifted extra territory. The legend goes that it is this battle which lowered the morale of Alexander’s forces and they refused to fight further. If a small kingdom gave them tough fight then there are no chances of surviving against mighty Nandas.

But, many historians including the western ones believe that Porus could have even won the battle, had he been able to understand the very basic problem in his military administration. For our surprise the main cause of Porus’ defeat  was the casteism. His cavalry consisted of soldiers from upper caste while his infantry was having low caste soldiers. Both cavalry and infantry fought valiantly but they lacked coordination because upper caste soldiers did not want to fight along with low caste soldiers. Don’t you think that we are still losing many battle against poverty, corruption, hunger, malnutrition because of this same malaise.

This division of society on the basis of caste and religion become the most visible during season of election. We can find many candidates who divide us on basis of caste, religion and  region and capitalizing on the hatred generated out it. The caste identities are so deeply imbibed in us that we lose rationality in deciding the right candidate who can think for progress of nation as a whole.

There are people who are flogged and tortured in name of caste. We stereotype the people restrict their social mobility just because they belong to lower caste. We not only stereotype people but we  rank the jobs as dignified and non-dignified depending on which caste carried out that job in past. According to noted writer Sh. Gurcharan Das in his book, one of the reason behind India not experiencing the industrial revolution was that we see floor jobs/manufacturing with feeling of contempt. Because in past manufacturing was carried out by Vaish and Shudras.

We do not see the larger issue of hunger and poverty because before every election someone will come and make you realise that interest of your caste is in danger. People of other caste are taking your jobs. People of other caste are raping your women. For god sake please accept the fact that criminals are criminals. They are found across all the caste and religion.  It is really bizarre that people in our country protect even the most notorious criminals and vote a criminal during election just because he/she belongs to their caste.

There is nothing wrong in thinking about and working for betterment of the people belonging to your own caste. Because, in India unfortunately caste still coincide with class. There are high chances that people belonging to particular castes are poor and some of the castes are rich. Thus, people of same caste shares same economic background as well as problems.There is no problem in opening hostels or facilitating community marriages for poor of particular caste.

But, the problem arise when we develop strong in group feeling or to be specific ill feeling for other castes. When we start thinking that people belonging to different caste are not our own people. When we start giving priority to people of our caste and depriving others of their rights. When we justify violence and lawlessness in name of caste. When forget rationality and basic human values in name of caste.

Then, what should be the solution ? I don't know the real solution of this centuries old problem. May be with time we all will realize that above all we all are human being first. May be we will understand the fact that man and society came first and then came the caste just as a division of labor in Vedic period for convenience of man. May be someday we will  realize that man does not exist for caste but it is the caste which came into existence for comfort of man.

Many says that with education man become wise and rational. But rising casteism among educated people is not in consonance of this belief. We are using technology ( whatsApp, facebook ) to further reinforce the caste identities. But giving benefit of doubt I would say that it happens with every society or nation whenever it is in transition. I will go with Gunar Myrdal that ours is a prismatic society and it will take time to become truly modern. Till that time let us be wise. Let us do our own part to to stop casteism within our capacity and within our own means. Let us rise for humanity as well while rising for cause of fellow caste members.

P.S. This post is written in line with my insistence of inviting others to pen down their thoughts and enlighten me. Mr. Om Prakash is Bits Pilani graduate and is currently working as an IRS officer. Coming from rural household in Rajasthan he has closely observed these problems . I am thankful to him for not just giving an insight into what holds us back but also giving a foresight of where to look for giving India the position it deserves in world.