SEZ is a strategy to make farmers into watchmen and peons in companies!

Please read the interview with SEZ chief G. K. Pillai at rediff http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/feb/21sez.htm.

The utter impunity with which our babus can declare what is right for the farmers of this country is repulsive to say the least. This character declares that it is more profitable for the farmer to sell his land than to continue doing farming. Financial return from land is the only motive of agriculture, not growing food.

Another view that comes across is sustenance farmers are better off if they don't continue that way. What about sustenance bureaucracy? What should one do with the self-perpetuating denizens of dead colonial minds? If commerce secretaries were as good as marketing agents of the corporate world, then they may as well not sustain them.

A farmer lives with some self respect in his land, he has some control over one piece of land that he utilizes. But, no, when the babus are controlled by the globalized corporate houses, why should the farmer have this freedom...'off he goes', declares our babu, 'be a peon, that befits you', of course, if you are smart enough to be tamed, you can be a 'skilled labourer', that is you become 'one of us'. After all the commerce secretary by the level of intelligence displayed is a very low level skilled labourer.

"..We are only taking a small piece of farming land, but, these are sustenance farmers, they only know farming, why do we need so many farmers anyway, good that enough numbers are committing suicides, but that is not large enough numbers for us to wipe out the 60% farm dependent population, it doesn't sound fine in multinational podiums, it sounds much better if we declare that 80% of this country is skilled to 'back process' the western world, do things like 5-step guide as to how to wipe their backs correctly over phone, reading out instructions from handed down computers, such dignified labourer existence, they all can wear suits, ties and look alike and western and developed and 'like us', why toil in the hot sun, when they can all work as BPOs and earn much more money, let them sell their lands, become something else, commit suicide, disappear, I don't want to see them, get rid of them", this is what his tone implies, this is a uncensored view of a babu mind. And what does he quote to justify his action?

"...the state governments have been doing it for decades, the colonials did it before that and others before that, our people have always been thrown out of their lands and given some compensation, why the hell can't they accept it and keep quite and leave, why all this ruckus..."

A few years back a Chief Minister of a state in this country by name Chandrababu Naidu made a similar declaration, wanting to displace 70% of his state farmers in 5 years and make them BPOs...5 years later, he doesn't exist politically today. Pillai is a top level bureaucrat, a limpet by definition, difficult, but, he too will disappear. The Indian farmer has survived centuries of babus and netas.

But, the attitudes of babudom is important to note. An earlier Secretary of Tamilnadu once told us that one of the methods of getting around the prohibition problem in Gujarat (this the state follows till date as a respect to Gandhiji) was to declare Porebandhar where Gandhiji was born as an Union Territory and have prohibition there alone and have the rest of the state merrier. Shows the babu mind. The babu mind in India is rather unique and deserves a better undertanding, glad that our friend Nagarjuna has created an apt title and blog to profile them.

Twice more farmers commit suicide in India than top 100 suicide countries put together!

7000 farmers commit suicide in India in the last 3 years!!!
That is an average of over 6 farmers committing suicide per day! more than 2300 per year!!

In a country of 70 million farmers, it is ten in every 100,000 farmer committing suicide. This is higher than the total national suicide (remember apart from farmers there is another 30 million Indians) as reported in Wikipedia, which unfortunately doesn't rate suicide based on the occupation of those committing it. Anyway it uses 1998 data for India!

If we take the listing of Wikipedia to be true, then the number of farmer's committing suicide in India is more than twice of the total number of suicides being committed in the top 100 countries (including India) on the suicide list! If this is not a matter of national emergency what else is?

The US Government and President needs to explain to its citizen every time there is more than one death of its military personnel in Iraq, and there have been 3000-0dd deaths since the beginning of the war. When did you see the PM last talking anywhere or explain what is wrong with the farming segment though we know that we have lost two times that of the US army in Iraq and more.

Retail 'boom', Budget discussion, summer heat, World Cup and Aishwarya wedding will start to crowd the public mind and they will forget the farmers issues can be a convenient calculation for the political babus to indulge in. This morning a farmer attempted suicide in front of his chief minister, that too just as the CM was claiming that there were no suicides in his district! What a form of protest!!

This protest of Indian farmers must be the most cruel in agrarian history (there doesn't seem to be a precedence of farmers committing suicides at this rate!?). A news item rates the seed company as the worst serial killer in history. Perhaps so. But, this suicide is a form of cruel protest no free government can witness so helplessly. A leader of a group of volunteers when he goes to Delhi cannot even meet with the Finance minister (called the Sensex minister), while the worst of the suicides happen at the home district of the Agriculture minister.

Its time that the world realize that this too is a form of violent protest, as violent as the war on Iraq or the attack on WTC. There is a sense of helplessness in the act of suicide, but, there is also a courage that is intrinsic. It may not be the salt satyagraha where the marching phalanx of protesters offered themselves willingly to the British batons, but, this is no lesser in significance, a silent suicide satyagraha - the only one that a poor isolated farmer could resort to, to exercise his power on the last will that he commands over.

Farmer Suicide: A shame like no other

Away from this land of slavery, my Lord, let my farmers die!

A nation where the mainstay occupation is eroded by design,

and there is no alternative left for those displaced!

A nation where the food production for the majority is still by a ‘unorganized’ lot

And yet ‘food security’ discourse never engages them!

A nation where the knowledge of ‘farmers’ of five thousand years

Can be subsumed, nay usurped, by a science of four decades (biotechnology)

A government that facilitates its children to become labourers to far off nations

While lakhs of farm labourers are ‘union-ed’ and ‘emancipated’ into unemployment

An ‘urban’ society that lives a make believe ‘jungle’ alien way of life and claims

Itself as ‘civil society’, neither knows civil nor patient to form a society;

A nation state that in a million podium every day quenches its thirst from its own water,

Bottled, labeled and paid for to corporates of other nations, yet too proud to call itself a ‘benevolent master’, nor dare to proclaim that it is an ‘obedient slave’,

A nation of a million free seeds that willingly enslaves its seeds, its seed keepers and their families in foreign lands, using foreign language for purposes that they never understand;

Where the land that produces in bountiful can be gagged, water that provides life can be leashed, soil assassinated and the very life force drowned,

Where farmer’s knowledge that gave them freedom can be commercialized without their consent and their aspirations trampled under the hoof an onward marching army of marketing aliens

Relieve the farmer from this hell of a nation, my lord, let there be more farmer suicides.

My Lord, Grant more farmers freedom from this country through suicides, Grant them the wisdom to understand the meaning of their act and strength to their families to withstand the same.

--- Yaro

Gap Year College! Go For It!!

For all those young ones who wanted to tread a different path, here is an initiative that provides an option at a fantastic location. The Gap Year at SIDH - http://www.sidhsri.com/gyc/

Photo-Blog: Traffic in Hyderabad

Was in Hyderabad and had the luxury of being driven around the town by three different drivers, all of them complaining about the traffic of this city. I am not writing much on it today, reserve it for some other time, but, wanted to share some photos I shot on Hyderabad traffic. So, this is a post with pictures to say stories.
Pic.1 - The story of development, roads being re-done, unfortunate statues of forgotten leaders being further abused by over sized hoardings, clue-less citizen cruising along...(Pic.2) while yet another flyover is to come up in front of more sky scraper hoardings...

While this is the environment for the traffic to operate, we come to the people in the traffic itself next...
Pic.3: Hyderabad police prescribe helmets from drivers not all riders, not many follow, with good reasons...here is a bike of a family of 6! How would they all fit with helmets?...and no body every follows the traffic lights...here (Pic. 4), look at the traffic light on the right corner and watch the large vehicle cutting from the left across the onward traffic...sab kuch chaltha hai spirit...

(Pic. 5) And the poor victims...pedestrians concerned (with an infant in this case) waiting patiently for the procession of merciless (and often mindless) cars to go past in every traffic crossing...(Pic. 6)...and commuters of public transport suffer the triple humiliation of no stand or shelter, having to withstand the road laying / relaying dust and rubble while they wait for the buses to arrive and with no demarcation , the traffic almost on their footsteps...

...and the ever present victims of urbanization across India (Pic. 7), those nameless persons who populate the footpath, live and die there and save much to the exchequer by not being a burden on it...(Pic. 8) not to mention the other major victims, which tries to see the silver lining in the opportunities of the economic growth, but, has to cope with the fact that it doesn't exist in the policy makers' mind the unorganized sector, here a fruit vendor, trying to navigate past crazy traffic...