This story begins with a mango and two brinjals. A mango that I bought. It seemed perfect when I bought it from the super market. But I found it wasn’t as tasty as I had expected. Then one day, my mother bought mangoes from a street side vendor. They looked horrible. I asked her whether it wasn’t a waste of time. I had to suck in that attitude when I found out that they were so tasty, I could hardly quit eating.
Now, we talk about the brinjal. Not Bt. Two ordinary brinjals, side by side. One is smaller and the other is larger. The larger juicier looking one costs less than the slightly disfigured small one. Which one would you buy? Naturally the larger one. Does it matter that they are fed on pesticides and fertilizers while the other is completely organically grown and that’s why it costs more?
More than half of the population is employed in agriculture in this country whereas agriculture as itself amounts to only 18% of the GDP. After the liberalization started, the growth of this sector has decreased when the whole economy is dashing across the race track at top speed. Where the entire population’s income rose by around 4%, only a marginal increase has been there in the case of agricultural workforce. Around 48% of small scale farmers are indebted. And we can guess to whom they are indebted. As the Government drives the economy towards more and more liberalization and offering incentives only to the richer of the farmers, one cannot help wonder how many more are going to commit suicide. So, I am talking about policies and how they affect the lives of some people. But, let us go a step further, round the corner to the nearest local farmer’s market. We are going there at a time when ASEAN pact is all set to import everything on the platter on a lesser price. Now, the question comes, when there is a growing following in the developed countries when it comes to the local farmer’s market, why is there apathy from our system? Why is it that most of these farmers have little or no access to technology and instead of admitting them into the system, we keep them on the periphery?
The middle class is increasingly being attracted towards the all-in-one supermarkets. Well, there is no question as to where the small farmers are left in this scenario. They are forced to sell their produce at much lower rates than usual which the supermarkets sell for much higher price. Last week I refused to buy spinach from an old woman because I had already bought some very colourful ones from a shop. She asked me where people like her would go if we didn’t buy from her. Very valid question. She told me that she has to sell her wares at the end of the day to some middle men at much lower price than what I would give her.
Another crux of the matter is most of these local markets operate in unhygienic conditions, along the roadside. No protection is offered to the vendors and no respect to what they sell. They have to stand the heat and the rain. So while we buy vegetables kept fresh by injecting god knows what, preserved in cold for a longer time than the everyday fresh ones in the market, we hardly notice the underbelly of these giants. And the real lives sacrificed for their making. I really don’t understand why there are no proper regulations to protect these lives or why the consumers aren’t made aware as to the choices they have and how these choices affect the economy. It is rather a pathetic condition when successive governments are doing everything to liberalise everything while owing no allegiance to the masses which voted them to power.
As always, since someone else (Robert M. Hutchins) said it better than I, The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Well, the last part is an entirely different topic. but, then again, i find so many different dimensions to this one statement.
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