Why Cities AND Farmers suffer? The real story.

Well the main reason why cities in India are neglected is because politicians from the time of Nehru have thought of India as a agricultural economy. Our cities were neglected saying 70% of the population lives in villages.( Well 30% in cities is a considerable number, God knows how they ignored it). Next came the land reforms. Give land to those who till it, they said. Well each farmer ended up with less than 5-6 acres of land. This turned agriculture uneconomical. Then came the green revolution, asking farmers to use expensive fertilizers. This made farms even more uneconomical.
Some may be arguing that it raised the yield. Yes yield increased, but only in the short term, vast areas of land today have turned too saline to be used due to excessive use of fertilizers. And although yield increased nobody bothered calculating that the cost of producing PER TONNE had also gone up. Now to save the farmers the politicians threw away money on schemes such as free power. The Vidharba Package(Maharashtra) is a classic example, all that money should have been used to build dams and canals so that the farmers get water, solving the root cause of their problems. In the end the state takes all the revenue it gets from cities and sends it to the rural areas. The net result? Our cities are cash starved. No money=No Development.
Recently the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been launched, it will make labour more expensive for the farmers, compounding their problems.

Give a man fish and he eats for a Day, but teach him to fish and he feeds himself for a lifetime goes a saying. Our Politicians delebrately do not teach fishing to farmers(i.e. GIVE them WATER) so that the farmers keep asking for 'Relief Packages' and the politicans can come and 'Give' the package in a grand way.

Suggested Reading:

• http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/bio/green.htm
• http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/feb25/articles16.htm (Very long article but worth reading)
• http://rural.nic.in/lr.htm (Very interesting site, by Govt. of India. It only mentions how much land has been 'Distributed' but does not comment on the effects this distribution has on agricultural Production).

Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme-A Different View

The rural employment guarantee scheme may be seen as a boon to the unemployed millions in India.
But is it really going to make a difference?
According to the scheme money will be handed over to the people at the lowest economic strata, this means all payments will have to be made in cash. Cash transactions are the hardest to track if not impossible. This non-traceability of money is the Achilles heel of the act. There is no way to trace corruption at the lowest levels of Bureaucracy. In a country where corruption takes place under the very nose of the law the scheme is a possible cash cow for the corrupt. Most of those who are the beneficiaries of this scheme are the uneducated and illiterate, how difficult is it for a government official to cheat these people?
Is the scheme worth the cost? That money could be used to improve India's crumpling infrastructure.
Critics may argue that just because a few officials may be corrupt does not mean the scheme is worth the cost. Let us realise that India is one of the most corrupt nations and where corruption takes place even when one is easily caught by a money/paper trail. The corrupt will surely pounce on this scheme.
Then there is the question of why should a person who has not worked be paid? (The scheme says if the government does not provide work it will pay). This will only draw labour away from industries and the agricultural sector. Hence labour will become expensive. The agricultural sector cannot afford to pay more for labour. With a collapse of industries unemployment will soar, so this is like a chain reaction leading to more and more unemployment.


Suggested Reading:

• http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/aug/22spec1.htm
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Scheme
  
• http://volunteerthoughts.blogspot.com/2005/08/national-rural-employment-guarantee.html
  
• http://us.rediff.com/money/2003/oct/07corrupt.htm