Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Unaviodable Industrialization??

.. "This year, the latest assessment of 2008 by
ICRA will show a growth rate of 4.5 to 4.7 percent
in agriculture. We are going to end up
with 227 to 230 million tonnes of food grains.
So agriculture in itself is doing well. Yet farmers
are poor because of the vast numbers dependent
on agriculture. If the numbers were
much smaller, let’s say half, you would say
agriculture is doing very well in India." ..
- P. Chidambaram says this in a recent interview

The answer which he proposes (getting farmers into the non-agricultural industries) is the most obvious solution. But we then see the repercussions of industrialization -- and how unwelcome it is to the poor people in rural India -- again, mainly because of the failure of proper implementation of the 'well-being' laws and policies. Given this fact, do we really not have any other way out than driving the poor people away from their own lands for a promise of a better India 50 years later -- which they might not even live to see.

2 comments:

Amogh said...

hi,
i agree that these problems need solving. But at some point we need to realize that we cant put more pressure on our land. Currently our density of population is something like 300 persons / sq km, which means that for every person there are approx 3333 sq mtrs, which isnt much considering that that includes forests, farms, rivers etc etc.
So im guessing that at some point we will need to moderate the size of our population. However this is an issue which most Indians are very sensitive to. Further as we are a democracy and since there is no consensus (plus the fact that all parties are power hungry) between parties on this issue , it seems like this isnt a problem thats going to fast resolve itself.
In my opinion the only way we learn is the hard way , so im guessing that unless theres a major change in the political scene, we are going to have a major ecological problem, followed by social, economic and political problems before we as a people come to terms with this.

As someone has rightly said we get the government we deserve , and the government is just a reflection , or a summary of its people.

Amogh said...

oh and i also forgot to add that i think your absolutely right when you say we need informed views,

all in all its good news that people like you are spreading your views around.

Warm Regards,
Amogh.