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| Photo taken in Jabarra village, Nagri Tehsil, Dhamtari district - Chhattisgarh |
Rural India - a place which gets lost in the noise of other news. Farmers in a lockdown are facing an uphill task trying to sell their agricultural produce. What impact has this had on rural India?
It has been a double whammy for the Indian farmers; on the one hand there has been unseasonal rainfall has taken its toll on crops and then came the corona lockdown.
As supply chains choke up, crops begin to rot. While some go hungry, farmers with milk to sell have no takers. Tonnes of gallons of milk have been thrown away and crops are left to wilt. The rural economy of India is under tremendous strain. How long will it take to normalise?
In another 10-15 days, over a 100 districts will enter their annual water scarcity problem. How the heck are we going to deal with this? Is there an iota of thinking about this within the government authorities?
What are people going to do - forget washing their hands 8 times a day, when they will not have water to drink?
For the first time people are realising who their workforce is and learning that is isn't the techies of Bengaluru. For the first time they are learning what makes the everyday of this country function. Without that labour, we urbanites are nothing. The same labour that has been informalized, from whom rights and entitlements have been taken away in the name of labour market flexibility etc.
Handlooms and handicrafts for decades have been the largest employees in the country after agriculture. We have weavers at the edge of starvation in many states within the country. Many artisans, craftsman and weavers are sitting with huge inventories of unsold items. The months of February to April see a huge number of exhibitions around the country which has now been cancelled. What are these people going to do?
Life before and after COVID-19 will not be the same. We have destroyed their safety and ignored the concerns of the small and marginalised farmers, migrants and others.
What plan does the government of India have for them?
2 comments:
Very well expressed the true scenario in rural India and more so about the impoverished people suffering the most. Who sadly are the heart of our country's progress, without whom the industries, formal or informal will come to a standstill. But the givers of wealth are left without basic necessities and above all sense of entitlement. Your experience gives us insight into this and makes us realize, what have we done as a society for them. Feel sad.
A nice perspective with alot of valid questions. These questions should have been raised by the Media but I don't see any coverage about this in the main stream media. I like the '100 district' question. It's an eye opener.
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