The most difficult and skillful job and yet so poorly rewarded
A software engineer has requirements, a missile scientist has even more precise requirements, a teacher has a syllabus to go by, a doctor, by and large has a procedure to follow, a farmer knows only what crop he has to grow. But everything else that goes into growing that crop is a variable such as the weather, the pests, the peoples life styles and a government that is indifferent to his needs. Unlike other professions there is no or very little margin of errors and there are no dry runs either.
After managing all the variables if he manages to produce a good crop, there is no guarantee that it will fetch him a good price. The farmer then needs to depend on the market and worst of all, yet again the government to guarantee a certain minimum price and protect its interests in the global market.
All these coupled with the lack of a proper support structure often pushes the farmer to take the extreme step. What else can explain an almost 3 lakh #farmer suicides since 1995 till date.
It isn’t like the government doesn’t have policies, programs and proposals to address the issues. The problem is however, that they just remain as policies, programs and proposals and are never implemented.
The farming crisis is no doubt a very serious and a very grave crisis and the most unfortunate part is the fact there isn’t enough focus on these issues. Be it the government or the media or even ordinary citizens like us. And while the scale of these problems are huge, there is still something you and I can do. The Vidarbha region is often referred to as the suicide capital of India, so why not start with Vidarbha. Below is an action plan as to what we citizens can do.
To facilitate and help create awareness to take this forward, the Indian Farmer League has been launched. The goal is to make it easier for people to understand the issues and help contribute so together we can help make a difference.
