Indian Agriculture

There was a time when Baba was an authority on Indian agriculture. There was a time when I could have spoken to him about it and mostly listened to his views on "food security" in the country. With only a weekly call bridging us today, I hardly can do that. I read this article by Vandana Shiva http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-02/10shiva.cfm which got me reminiscing.

As we continue to trade away our freedoms to pander to an increasingly vocal media elite and as we begin to genuflect at Bush and America's altar, what niggles is thought of what is to follow. The middle class in India has finally awakened to "life and freedom" and now have a very keen sense of their deserving. Not so when our parents were growing up - no not when our "tryst with destiny" was truly made. Only now does the "dil maange more".

Middle class India have well appropriated the media to increasingly focus on the vapid and lifeless paraphernelia of their own secure lives. There is little coverage on widespread protests of Bush's visit to India. No farmer's suicide makes front page news but the bill of fare lavished on Bush by the master chef of the Taj group at banquets held by our obsequious heads of state does. And as middle class India salivates and drools and congratulates itself on having finally arrived on the world scene, 600 million people look askance at a government that came into power defying all predictions of the self same elite media. These 600 million defied the predictions because they did not want CEOs as Chief Ministers and they did not want neo-liberalism or Hindu fascism or what have you. The new bosses had a more "brilliant disguise" and the defences of the 600 million have been broken.

One day, these sallow, defenceless faces will yield no longer. No more will they put in those ballots into boxes to allow self-serving, war-mongering stuffed shirts to control their destiny. Proud ploughs and furrows in hand, they will take back what is theirs and if they spill some blood of lily-livered city folk with their newspapers and fashions and web-sites and sports idols - well, that would truly be "collateral damage" - of little or no significance.