Milking the farmers dry..

Ok guys. I get the message.
Now that I have opened up comments, I have got some nice ``vicious'' ones, the ones I had specifically requested you fine people, with folded hands, NOT to send my way!!!
But guess what? what I didnt tell you in my mail was that your `dor' is very much in my hands. So, I will decide whether your comment makes it to the blog or not. Aha!
Thanks for the nice ones that have come so far, Anshu, Shammi and Arun (i.e. Dr Bhatt!).
Yes, do email me as you always do, if you don't have a blog here or cannot post a comment.

Sorry for behaving like a homing pigeon. But I can't help feeling amazed at this portly man we in the media indulgently call the `Maratha strongman. ' For those outside the state, I am talking about Sharad Pawar, the union agriculture minister and the BCCI chief. Should it be the other way round, going by his grading for each of these masks?
Last evening, the ticker on one news channel flashed, ``Eight more farmers commit suicide in Vidarbha'', (a region covering Nagpur, Amravati, Akola and all of central Maharashtra). On the screen was Pawar beaming over some Significant Moment of his life as BCCI chief.
The man sucks! Since this January, an average of three farmers have been committing suicide in Vidarbha region every day. The issue is multi-faceted and complex-- difficulty in getting seeds for organic farming, ignorance about multi-cropping, irrigation, loans going at 25 - 50% interest and so on. (have written a little more about this earlier on, for those who are interested.)
And what has this man, who has the gall to call himself an agriculturist, done in the past nine months? As far as I know, he has not bothered to pay more than one whistlestop visit to this region. Of course that visit boomeranged and most anguished farmers justifiably wanted to throw their vegetating produce at his face.
So what does our man do? He promptly drops the show, flies back to Delhi and plays boss at more welcoming places like BCCI. Any other self-respecting person in his place would have sworn not to look in any other direction until the farmers' lives got back on track. But here's a man who couldnt care less about the farmers or about Sonia Gandhi becoming prime minister so long as his kursi is firmly tethered to power. Someone needs to load-shed him.
It's India's misfortune that it's a democracy. Our skewed voting system enables us to vote in anyone who makes or promises to make a modicum of difference to our living space. So someone like Pawar can get away with this brazen callousness simply because he has improved life for himself and, in the process, for others, in his home town, Baramati, which religiously votes him to power poll after poll for 25 years. It's ironic that one region of Maharashtra (the farmers) can't do a thing because another region gives him a leg-up to Delhi.
Last heard, he was shuffling his feet in front of Sonia Gandhi to save his skin. The Sphinx was to address a Congress-I CMs' conclave at which the farmers' plight was expected to come up for discussion. It worked. The S commended his work at the conclave which mainly comprises packages and packages and promises of easier credit.
More on why he is so critical in this business of saving lives and agriculture (in that order) and why his packages are a sham. One, he is the agriculture minister. One expects him to deliver, and not the finance minister whose job it is NOT to fund cosmetic rescue efforts by his colleagues.
Two, Pawar is from Maharashtra, has been CM thrice, and continues to expect the state to fuel his ambition of becoming PM.
Three, in a brilliant perspective piece in DNA, food analyst Devinder Sharma gives a perfect insight into the crisis plaguing wheat cultivation today. The entire story can be safely co-opted for other crops as well.
The gist: Ever since the government began permitting private parties to buy wheat directly from farmers, India has become net importer of wheat from being an exporter--from 0.5 million tonnes, we now import 5.5 million tonnes (two million additional tonnes thanks to Pawar's honourable anxiety to prevent a `food scarcity') at the cost of Rs 5,500 crore. As private purchases created an artificial shortfall in public godowns, the government imports wheat. The price of imported wheat is Rs 1,100 per quintal, twice that of the government's procurement price of Rs 650. Why not pay this amount to the ailing Indian farmer instead of his American counterpart who already enjoys huge subsidies from his government?
Next, the government comes out with a Rs 2,480 crore saviour package purportedly to boost productivity in the 138 Indian districts producing wheat, but which actually helps the agribusiness lobby. So, we have generous hand-outs for sprinkler sets, gympsum supply and such. The sarkar mai baap is also actively discouraging higher yields by threatening to get out of procurement.
Yet, we had a wheat harvest of 72 million tonnes in 2004-05, enough to feed the country for a year. But does it matter?

Saw Lage Raho Munnabhai recently. Wasnt too sure whether it will do justice to Gandhiji but Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of the Mahatma, reassured me.
And of course, many were surprised that I, a self-professed Gandhi fan, hadnt seen it.
To keep my reputation intact, I marched into the multiplex (do they have any single screens left?!) with a dupatta and a muffler tightly drawn over my head (I had a huge cold and was on sick leave). As it turned out, the AC was smartly turned off midway and I was soon sweating.
The movie was sweet, of course, with not one politically incorrect word or glance. It was nice to see someone resurrecting Gandhiji in this manner, and the effect the movie had on people.
One small quibble.. it did not bring out the import of Gandhiji's superhuman persona, which is fine. But, on the contrary, it made him look a trifle sorry at least in one scene in which Sanjay Dutt shows the other cheek to the assaulter. Here, a casual reference to the fact that Gandhiji did not only believe in getting beaten up all the time would have helped. All his life, he protested violence. But he believed that violence is better than non-violence if someone is turning to non-violence out of fear of the opponent. As far as he was concerned, cowardice was a worse vice. And, I may be wrong, but this scene left me with the feeling that Gandhiji was preaching cowardice.
I am amazed at what this movie is doing to people. There are quizzes on the Mahatma, Gandhigiri problem-solving and so on. What I find ironic is that when the media needed to know whether the movie does justice to Gandhiji, it turned to his immediate family-- Tushar Gandhi and his aunts, etc. And to think, Gandhiji hardly got any time for his immediate family, caught up as he was in tending to his country-wide brethren. For a man who considered his family as just any other Indian family, it's a sad comment on how we have treated him by deciding that his legacy is limited to his family alone. Why on earth is he called Father of the Nation?
P.S. To me, Gandhiji's family is the real Gandhi family-- the first family of India but we choose to bequeath that title to the Nehrus who for reasons unknown (or probably well known) decided to adopt the surname, `Gandhi'.

I have been reading a biography of Albert Einstein, one of my favourites along with Isaac Newton since my childhood. Even he had to pay the price for being a Jew in pre-Nazi Germany and could therefore appreciate the virtue of non-violence and Gandhiji.
One of Einstein's comments that gripped me as a kid has been about his own relativity. He would stroll down the beach and often wonder at the universe (or space?) before him, and ponder over his own insignificance in the larger scheme of things. Like a speck of sand on the beach, he said.
If a genius of his order thinks this way, what are we? It is this humility that makes Gandhiji and him just so admirable.

Now, for a few good laughs:

My Mallu husband was born and brought up in Kerala. One fine day, he decided to up and study in Baroda, least daunted by the fact that he knew no Hindi, let alone Gujarati. There, he ganged up with a few fellow Mallu students to give us the benefit of some hilarious moments:

He bought a pair of slippers at a shop. The bill was in Gujarati. So, he asked the shop-keeper the price. The shop-keeper said something in Gujarati. My man thought he said 75. So, remembering someone's this-worldly advice about bargaining being the key to happiness in Gujarat, he said, ``No, give it to me for Rs 70.''
The shop-keeper stuck to the amount. After much head-banging, the shop keeper took out some currency notes and showed him Rs 45! ``It's only Rs 45,'' he said exasperatedly. ``Why should I take more?!''
Some sincerity this! And they still say Gujjus are money-minded.

After a few months, his Mallu friends grew confident of handling small talk themselves. So, at a restaurant, when they were served two plates of unda bhurji and they wanted to swap one for a curry, one friend bravely called the waiter, and brandishing the plates, said, ``ek unda bhurji jao, ek egg curry aao.''

The funniest is the anecdote about a friend who would go to the bus stop and, unable to read bus numbers in Gujarati, ask people around, ``Ye bus kiska hain?'' Not surprisingly, he got only funny stares and no answers.

One of his Mallu friends was left home alone one day. He was taught two Hindi words to tell the maid: ``Idhar saaf karo,'' pointing to the kitchen platform. When the maid came, the friend did as told. The bai nodded and told him, `` Ok. you need to take away all the stuff stacked on it first.'' To which he said, ``Idhar saaf.'' She said, ``Yes, but how do I clean with this mess around?'' To which he repeated, ``Idhar saaf.''
This apparently went on for a respectable amount of time after which the maid shook her head, slammed all the paraphernalia on the floor and went at it.

A softcore Mallu (as opposed to hardcore, because he thought he understood Gujjus well) had to see the doctor. But the clinic was closed. So, he asked some people nearby about the doc's whereabouts. He was told, ``Woh off ho gaya.'' ``Oh,'' said the friend, and went back home. The next day, he dutifully trudged to the clinic and heard the same story. And the third day too. After some reflection, he asked a friend, ``Does `off' mean a long holiday?'' The Gujju enlightened him, ``It means the doc is dead.''

Another Mallu had a funny experience with his doctor. He told the doctor, ``Kuch bhi khao shardi hota hai.'' The doc was foxed. How come? he asked. How can all foods cause a cold? After some decoding, each figured they were misinterpreting the other. The matrubhakt mallu meant vomitting and not cold, as `Shardi' in Malayalam is vomiting!