The agrarian crisis!
After pushing myself for quite sometime i finally watched Nero's guests.
Nero's guests is a documentary by Deepa Bhatia seen through the work of P.Sainath the rural affairs editor of 'The hindu' newspaper.
For a person like me who hardly follows any news out of the belief that most of today's news is cooked up by the corporate world,Documentaries such as this helps to make you a bit more optimistic.
A large part of India is agriculture dependent, Farming is one of the largest sector of India.Indian spices,coffee,rice,cotton etc are in high demand in Developed countries and are hence exported in large quantities.Despite the influence of the agriculture on the Indian economy there are hardly few souls who actually care about those who grow these crops.
The life of a farmer is not an easy,money is a big problem. Additionally there is no guarantee that the money invested will always yield profit. A profit if any is used to for house hold purposes and future investment for crop growth. Loans from banks are hence not repayed, this is the main cause for the suicide's.
If your one from the 90's I'm sure you would have noticed that mangoes,apples,watermelons and many other fruits tasted better in those days than they do now. The reason is that all the quality produce is generally exported to developed countries, still the farmers are kept in the dark and not given the total amount they deserve.
Women working away from their home, they spend almost 20 hours each day. They don't meet children nor do children meet their mothers.The youth are forced to leave their education due to lack of funds. The responsibility of running a house is generally forced on the shoulders of teen aged boys. These are just a glimpse of the hardships faced by the lower 5% of the Indian subcontinent.
AS an Indian the least we can do to help bridge the inequality between the poor and us is to spread awareness of the present day problems around us.
http://www.somethingaboutthelaw.com/2008/01/07/p-sainath-on-farmer-suicides/