Fake Plight of Farmers.

Social media is flooded with the wrinkled faces & sore feet of the farmers walking down the streets of Mumbai ..  – Not to forget – causing immense stress on city commuters.

It reminds me of studying a chapter in school, LAAL CHIKHAL, describing the exact same story of the poor & hardworking farmer who ends up destroying his produced.
I don’t remember the writer but guess the content must have been written atleast 3 decades old.
Infact the perceived situation of the famers has not changed a bit for very long period irrespective of the governments in states & center. To give a prospective.. That is the time when Ajit pawar was pissing in diapers till he started pissing in dams.

The political influence of this class is way better than the urban society, which is evident in the tall political leadership of rural Maharashtra. Except Balasaheb, no urban leader has managed to create any dent in the rural dominated politics.
Also with timely debt waivers & compensations, govt keeps reciprocating for its obligations towards this sector.
Which then makes me wonder about what keeps them going with so much agony n pain on their shoulders.

Answer to it is very obvious. The whole agony picture is fake.. its highly decorated for fooling people like us in the cities.

We all agree that the quality of life is better in the villages with no pollution & fresh unadulterated goods, easy transport, safe neighborhood. But then everything comes with some positives & negatives.
We don’t walk down the streets for demanding better roads, lesser pollution OR for that matter lower taxes.
We do not see even slum dwellers marching for the better facilities.
How the hardship of a farmer is any different than that of a rickshaw driver or a tea vendor in a city.
I don’t remember any loan waivers to rickshaw owners after OLA/UBER spoiled the market. How is that different than the drought releif.

650,000 no of tractors are sold in India every year which amounts to 23000 Cr yearly. This is purchasing power in the villages of India which is spent on pure Luxury. I am ignoring the Mercs & Fortuners sold in rural india.

Agri loans are considered priority sector for Banks. Farmers with upto 2 lakh sq feet of land is considered “Small and Marginal farmer” .. who enjoys all loan waivers .. with this, now try convincing a mumbaikar, who spends his entire life in 10×10  room in a chawl(100 sq feet) or in a slum , struggling for every day needs.

Who out of the two you think is marginalized now.

Another tools for glorifying the financial situation of farmers is Suicides. As per RTI information, the farmer committing suicide is less than 5% in overall suicide data of India.  Whereas 41% are self employed & daily wagers. Also, the major reasons for suicide remains, “Family issues” & “Illness” contributing 40%. There are more people committing suicide due to Marriage/love disputes than farmers. Therefore any claims of farmers’s deteriorating financial situation is simply hoax in my view.

1 more interesting fact which i find difficult to ignore is that, this so called dying ecosystem of farming becomes very peppy when it comes to selling their land to Government for Dams or for industries. When they are so convinced that farming is not a dependable profession for generations now, how come it becomes so exciting when it comes to selling their land for more prosperous career in Industries.

The crux of the matter is.. the plight of the farmer is nicely painted, polished, packed & served so very well, that we all end up buying it.