This is the link to my piece on The Hoot. The story has been turned around a bit and for those who are interested, I have pasted my original story too.

http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=4631&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=20&valid=true

It hit me in the pit of my stomach just when I was having lunch. A brief  Times of India report on an inside page talked of hundreds of farmers and farmer widows going hungry in protest at Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district in Nagpur on June 1.

Yavatmal is one of the worst affected districts of Vidarbha, also known as the suicide capital of the country. The farmers were protesting to highlight their critical fight for survival and the failure of the sundry government doles to provide relief.

Their twin demands were: probe into the failure of special relief packages and disbursal of fresh crop loans for the kharif season. They made a very reasonable demand: “sustainable crop alternative” and not high technology and high risk crops promoted by American MNCs.

The news had all the ingredients worthy of a perfect news story. It had a new development, human interest, pathos, controversy, largeness of scale: farmers going on a hunger strike to protest the unpalatable apathy of an administration and the failure of cosmetic relief packages from no less than the PMO; a Comptroller and Auditor General report that cites irregularities in the Prime Minister’s special Rs 3,720 crore relief package for the three million farmers of Vidarbha, hinting at massive corruption.

Yet, most newspapers gave it a miss or mentioned it in a way the reader would anyway miss it.

A few days later, a similar report grazed past the media in spite of being tailor-made for a newsbreak: On Environment Day (June 5), Vidarbha reported 213 human deaths due to the heat wave in ten days. This tragedy is interwoven with the larger problem of water scarcity in the region which in turn is the result of an enduring neglect of agriculture by the governments. 

Most rivers and reservoirs in Vidarbha are dry and groundwater table too is fast sinking.  Activist Kishore Tiwari says there is only three per cent water in Vidarbha dams and four per cent water in Marathwada dams, another water-scarce region neighbouring Vidarbha. A relentless plunder of the forests, skewed agricultural policies, inefficient cropping patterns, invasion of GM, etc. have all simultaneously led the charge on the miserable farmers.

Incidentally, whatever water is available underground is unpotable and hazardous but the beleaguered villagers have no choice. On his part, Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan has cited water scarcity in over 20,000 villages, clearly a conservative estimate.

These facts had all the trappings of a horror story. In fact, there are a string of horror stories in the villages to hold the attention of the reader but for some reason, the media is not willing to baulk. The story of the Indian rural masses that can yield ‘Breaking News’ for our byte-thirsty media cameras for days and years on end is mystifyingly told only in passing.

The Indian farmer’s only benefactor is the rain. We refuse to lend a helping hand even when he continues staring at the skies for years on end. By our sheer apathy to the man who gives us our daily bread, we have worn him out. He has been reduced to a nomad, disowned by his people and country.

The priorities of the media are very clear. The city alone matters, and that to the exclusion of the villages. As far as the media is concerned, Mahatma Gandhi’s precious villages can continue to rot and, like the state in the Marxian scheme of things, wither away.

The tragic irony of many urbanites toasting ourselves over increments and promotions and generally holidaying this season hits hard when large parts of the country that keep us going are weathering untold financial and psychological distress. For several years running.

The story of two Indias—one urban, savvy and upwardly mobile, and the other with its heart and mouth at the mercy of the rains – has been told. So it is nothing short of a miracle that both still manage to move together even if not so much in sync but certainly without crossing each other’s paths.

If the farmer has been kind to let us be, we have been cruel enough to let him be. There is an unsettling disconnect between him and us. We have simply not bothered with his worries, which have been growing over the years.

While urban India doesn’t care, the farmer -- even if consumed by his own misery -- is simple and unquestioning enough not to contest the gigantic pie-share claimed by his privileged urban cousin.

The aspirational chart of our farmers hangs low, reaching merely the bank gates in the fond hope that he will able to spare himself the prospect of suicide by repaying the few hundreds or thousands of rupees he borrowed to buy seeds and fertiliser.

Every day, he sees his countrymen in skinny jeans swishing past his field in a Skoda, glued to i-pods that bleat an unfamiliar beat. But even though he is geographically within touching distance, he knows that world is not within his reach. Not until the Skoda driver rolls down the window, pushes up his glares and takes a close, hard look at him.

This interaction can happen only if, one, the driver pauses to take in his surroundings, and two, he rolls down the glass. If he stays immersed in his happy lot, there is little chance he will ever know about the man wiping a silent tear every day on his fields. Similarly, even if he is keen to get a peek at the outside world, he cannot do so unless his window is open. That is, unless the media, which is the lay man’s window to the world, is sensitised to the farmer’s plight, it cannot really open the driver’s eyes to the sorrowful vista of a forlorn land and a forlorn land owner.

Any trip to the villages brings one a flood of stories crying to be told. One of them is that of a new generation which is disillusioned with farming and hooked to the television. The youth in the villages are increasingly taking to petty and serious crime to feed their homes. They have no faith in the supposedly democratic systems to deliver justice.

Another story is that of the high level of tolerance of the Indian farmer. An hour of load shedding has us urbanites cursing the government, the prime minister and the world at large but a 12-hour load-shedding gets hardly a whimper out of the farmer. He often has to be goaded to gripe and complain. And, when he does that, he does it blandly, devoid of emotion. He is resigned to his fate. All he wants is a leg-up at times when he cannot help himself.

It’s not so much the reporter as the media publishers who bear the large brunt of the blame for this shameful state of affairs. Most publishers find farmer stories dull, weepy and prefer racy, urban stories that their readers can instantly connect with. This means a large, stifling dose of Bollywood stories on meaty stuff such as which of the Khans is a chain smoker and who does what, or whom, on a Sunday.

News about the farmer, if ever written, lie buried in a corner of an inside page of a newspaper. The editor believes he has done his job and the reporter doesn’t know how to take it forward.

The need of the hour is for media houses to take up the matter on a war footing, flaunt such stories across the banner, scream five to ten questions at the government each day a la Indian Express during Emergency and generate mass awareness about the wanton crucifixion of the Indian farmer.

Gen Next is tuned in, all we need to do is play it for them.

Ends