'…It is this missing ingredient that I helped
to provide by undertaking a search for genes for non-lodging plant habit…’–
taken from a recent newspaper article by Prof.M.S.Swaminathan. Even a sincere
googling did not help me figure out the meaning of the line; especially the term
given towards the end of the line. But for that, the Prof has inimitably articulated what he has been yelling whenever he got a chance: “Guys, we will run
short of food very soon”. It is a common knowledge that right from hinterlands
of Haryana to the Kaveri delta, swathes of agriculture land is being gobbled by
non-farmers like us. The answer lies in “productivity enhancement”, we say. Compared
with the comparables (!) we easily have a scope of cutting down our cultivated
area by half and still maintain this day’s level of production. In other words, we can quickly double
the yield levels. We can also manage the farm growth at a level that will be
good enough to feed our yearly addition to the number of mouths. (By the way,
the per hectare consumption of fertilisers has more than doubled in the last
twenty years) There is a whole of lot technology available these days. Right from
GM crops to mobile apps with live updates on rates at the nearest mandi,
technology is there to our rescue. Why bother brother? There is no problem with the
malls and apartments eating into the erstwhile farms teeming with food crops
and associated birds, worms, rodents, snakes, frogs and farmers. Anyway, Indian
agriculture has been a classic example of disguised unemployment i.e. more than required
number of people are loitering in sun and rain on the pretext of sowing,
weeding, irrigating, harvesting and the like. Efficiency is the name of the
game. The slack should be sucked out. In the whole bargain more economic
activity is generated in the system– the huge malls keep thousands of people
employed, the money and material that go into the construction of apartments keep
alive many men, women and their kids, the aroma of urbanisation will be there
for the villagers to fill their lungs and most importantly – the land-owning
farmers get attractive prices good enough to get fully settled in their lives. It
is a win-all situation. QED.
Well, not so. Among the
many reasons that come in between us and the QED, two stand out. Firstly,
though we boast of surpassing the landmark figure of 250 million tonnes of food
grain output, we can realise the hollowness of our achievement when we look at the availability of food per person. Without
getting into the rigour of statistical models (which I am anyway weak at), we can safely say that – nothing
has changed in the past 50 years. Each one of us still has only about 160 kg of
food grains per year. So what? The consumption pattern is changing, you see? More
and more are shifting from rice and wheat to cereals, pulses and other
protein-rich diet. There is a transformational shift happening. Oh, is it? Yes, definitely
with those of us visiting the McDs and the KFCs in the weekends that start from Wednesdays these days. But, shockingly,
for the country as a whole – each one of us gets only half the amount of
cereals and pulses of what we got in 1950. To put things in perspective, grams
and pulses put together, what I have for the whole year is only less than 15 kg.
Had I been born with my father I would have enjoyed double the availability. Sad
truth. But happy for my dad! The short point being, productivity levels are not going to go up drastically. There is going to be a deficit between how much we can get from the shrinking farms and how fast we propagate our species.
The other
problem is more serious. It is going to cripple us. Thanks
to many things including the fundamental neglect of the farms by our policies and support systems –
not many from the Gen-Z are ready for the treacherous ordeal with nature. They
have seen their parents suffer and kill themselves in silence. They have experienced the pain of
treading the thin line that separates life and death with every passing day of the
delayed onset of monsoon. They have heard, seen and known that all it takes to
escape the wrath of agriculture and the uncertainty it brings is – a train to
the nearest city. Even with all its visible hardships and hidden vices, you
just have to fight with people and concrete in the cities. It is much easier than facing the
ire of nature head on, year after year - alone. In a city, there is no need to keep cravingly staring in the direction of the seas with folded palms. There is no stress of the intimidating
interest-counter that starts ticking from the very first day you got the first
bag of urea with a hope that Varuna will keep up his timing. It is also not necessary to be at the mercy of the government staff,
traders and middlemen. Yes, in the cities there is a real threat of getting killed
by a stranger at the wheels of a brand new poison-spitting SUV – but it is far better than
being pushed to consume pesticides purchased with borrowed money. So, we find the Indian Railways
bringing in more and more youngsters from villages to towns and cities. The rotting cities of our country are their land of milk and honey. The urban
slums keep swelling and the farm lands gets converted to plots for sale. We keep buying. It
appears that the process has become irreversible. Nobody wants to miss a chance
to leave the farms.
The whole
set of problems that we have given the farmers is sadly bringing about an attitudinal
change in the minds of the rural teenagers. They feel it is not their sole
burden to carry this huge country on their shoulders. Rightly so. We need not understand
what the Prof means by ‘non-lodging plant habit’. But it is high time we had realised
the importance of his closing line: ‘If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else
will have a chance to go right.
(All views are personal. All facts are almost real.)
