Farmer's Plight - By Abdul Wahid Saleem

Mankind began as a hunter, followed by gatherer and finally settling down to a niche area. Our primary goal since the time we were on earth was to find food and shelter.

The changing times has brought something beside our basic needs of food and shelter to lifestyle and money. In the race for money and lifestyle, the basic need of food is often unnoticed because we are provided with an ample number of choices to have.

What we often forget in these demanding times are our farmers, the root of our civilization; the people who toil hard day and night to produce food for us. Farming is not anymore a mainstream ‘business’ . Everybody wants to be a doctor or an engineer because these professions have better pay and less work when compared with a farming job.

Since agriculture is not ‘the business’ people want to pursue, there is less or no development in this area which has indirectly affected the productivity of farming. Adding to this woe is the fast and unpredictable change in the climate, the pollution and man made factors that has made drought more dry and made rain more water.

All these problems in the ‘business’ of agriculture have been funneled down to one core problem: the income of farmers. Since agriculture is not a good ‘business’, who is paying for the farmer?. The answer lies in the number of suicide of farmers in India; no one is paying the farmers. No politician, no organisation, even God sometimes fails to help the farmers.

Writers like me can write about the plight. I can only bring the horse near water, I cannot make the horse drink it. Whoever is in authority should open their eyes soon.