The state of the Indian nation is good and not so good. There are many contrary and contradictory signals in the big and small picture, in the kaleidoscope of the country, its regions not just diverse, but also some of them marching ahead, many others slipping backwards. Within the regions, there are areas of prosperity and belts of great misery. Let us take a look at Ratnagiri and Nashik in Maharashtra. Do the vineyards and red and wine makers hint at new life styles, semi European style, with tables decked with wineglasses for dhoti and pugree wearing farmers sipping in style, sniffing sophisticated flavours with a snack thrown in?
Yet within Maharashtra, the Vidharbha region, is often dry as a reed and no doubt hapless, helpless and starving as farmers continue to take their own lives. Why? Why have 50,000 of them done so in 36 districts of the country in the past ten years? Is it because they have no rain, no irrigation and whatever they sow yields little or nothing? Or have they been literally led up the garden path by modern day moonshine operators who promise them a good harvest if they sow very costly genetically modified cottonseeds, which sprout not without large doses of water? But where is the water? It is just not there, more often than not. They fail usually. If it does rain, it is too little.
There is no storage of that little rainwater. It runs to waste. There are no dams or reservoirs, big or small, to release water when needed. There is no water harvesting. There are a few trees, but no real forests to create a green belt of sorts. Yet Rs.3,500 crores provided for afforestation remains in the Central kitty, unspent, unused, not demanded or asked for by the States to protect the environment and possibly build up those reservoirs by the natural process to save lives of men, women and children. This is the story that could be and is repeated in large parts of the country ad infititum as 30 per cent or more of India is not just desert, but also parched dry land.
The question that arises is whether the new retail giants and fast moving consumer goods or FMCG manufacturers will deliver a better deal to the farmer by paying higher prices for the produce than the existing market forces? Will they assist the farmers with good quality seeds and other farm inputs, including pumps to draw water? If they do, they would prove themselves to be the ones engaged in affirmative action. Will the oil companies engage in producing oilseeds like jatropha in a big way to produce ethanol to blend with fossil fuels being imported at a high cost? If they do, they will be serving the nation in a positive way. If they do not, they might face the writing on the wall as tribals in deep misery are gathering together to write a script that may be unpalatable to the system that obtains today.
For long agriculture has been a laggard, growing at the Hindu rate of 2 per cent or even zero in really bad years when there has even been a decline compared to the previous year's farm output. Yet in 60 years since Independence India's grain output has grown seven times from 30 million tons to 210 million tons today with an impressive increase in cash crops and perhaps less impressive growth of cottage industries. But for 70 per cent of the people living in the countryside and depending mainly on farming and allied activities, the quality of life has not changed much. There may be an oasis in Punjab, Haryana, west Uttar Pradesh, parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat, but what about the rest of the country? The answer could not be positive and the rulers of today or bygone years, now in Opposition, are well aware of this fact. Yet what are they doing about it? They may be trying hard and hoping for the best.
Time was when agriculture was sliding, conventional wisdom was that industry should fill the gap of progress by raising gross national product by 4 per cent or so. Today manufacturing grows at 12 per cent, services at 25 per cent year after year. With agriculture being a grey area, GNP is rising between 8 and 9 per cent a year. With the rupee value rising in world markets, India has become a trillion dollar economy. In purchasing parity price or PPP terms, India's GNP could well be $3 to 3.5 trillion as goods and services are still much cheaper in India than in the First World. Financial wizards will look forward to the $2 trillion GNP landmark within five years or less, but how will it help the poor? That is a catch 22 factor.
