Indian Villages For Sale

[Clara T]

Indian Villages For Sale
by Devinder Sharma
February 12, 2006
 

Harkishanpura is a non-descript village in Bathinda district of Punjab in northwestern India. It suddenly made its way into news when in an unprecedented move the village panchayat announced that the village was up for sale. That was in Jan 2001. Since than five more villages in Punjab - in the midst of the food bowl of the country - are awaiting auction. 

What began as an isolated and an extreme case of rural distress is now slowly and steadily spreading its tentacles throughout the country. In December 2005, Dorli in Wardha district of Maharashtra in central India became the first village outside the frontline agricultural state of Punjab - the harbinger of Green Revolution in India - to make itself available for sale. With signboards pasted all around, and the slogan " Dorli village is for sale" painted on the cattle back and trees, what appeared to be a bizarre tale is now becoming a sad but widespread reality.

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And yet, it doesn't shock the conscious of the world's biggest democracy. There was no public outrage when earlier reports showed that sixty-five of the 243 farmers who committed suicide in Vidhrabha region of Maharashtra in 2004 alone had debts as little as Rs 8,000 (110 pounds).  That Meena Prakash Rechpade, widow of the 36-year-old farmer, Prakash, of village Dhanori, near Wardha, in Maharashtra, had no money to arrange for the last rites of her husband, who took the fatal route to escape the misery of Green Revolution, did not evoke strong reaction. Except for routine inquiries and promises, such stories have failed to move the nation.

Not only in Punjab and Maharashtra, tens of thousands of farmers throughout the country are migrating every season looking for menial jobs in the urban centres. Mofussil newspapers in the heartland of the cyberstate - that's how Andhra Pradesh in south India wanted itself to be called - are full of advertisements inviting people to mortgage their gold and silver belongings. In Karnataka, where farmer suicide rate is equally high, the over-emphasis on technology had only alienated a large percentage of farming populations from economic growth and development. The biggest tragedy being that both the states have turned into a national capital of shame for farmers' distress, visible more through the increasing rate of suicides in the rural areas

While the rural misery continues to multiply, what is more depressing is that the government is clueless of the reasons that aggravate agrarian crisis. Nor is there any effort from agricultural scientists, economists, and social scientists to come out with proposals to put an end to this shameful blot on the country's image. The reason is obvious. No one has the political courage to point a finger at the fundamental reason behind the collapse of the Green Revolution. It not only acerbated the crisis leading to an environmental catastrophe but also destroyed millions of rural livelihoods.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=9710