Raghavan Farmer Emancipation
5th Jun 2017
Emancipaion of small and marginal farmers in India
When I grew up as a Salesman, I was passionate to find a satisfactory and sustainable answer to my customers and that trend continued after I retired. The plight of small and marginal farmers stuck to my mind when my parents used to take us to our village in south India for vacations and there I used to be curious about the peasants who ploughed the fields of my grandfather. I saw poverty from close quarters and used to wonder why this despondent situation prevailed continuously upon them and many like them around? They were landless and were just labourers but when I began to see farmers with lands of their own, the situation wasn’t any better. These impressions stuck to my mind and after demitting office, I felt pretty bad for them and began to seek a solution for their betterment or emancipation. That is my story, indeed.After a lot of study and stay over in villages thereafter, I witnessed the worst of destitution and penury of these farmers, who depended on rainfall, had lands that are fragmented and in perpetual debt that could not buy them good seeds and whatever they grew went towards either paying off interest on their loans or intermediaries coming to any paying prices that they chose. My study of the various initiative that was at work and found them not solving the core issues but a mere lip service to speak the least. They were also slothful and corrupt to give nothing substantive help to farmers. At that time, I know that they are ‘barking the wrong tree’.This misery was unbearable as farmers who produce food for us had to remain hungry and desperate to find a decent living like anyone of us in the urban area and lead a life educating our children, get suitable jobs to earn money sufficient and also to save for the rainy day. For them all days were rainy!