A 3D Perspective

It is not very easy to maintain one’s balance and perspective when one’s job involves going deep into the villages six days a week, spending the night in a small town and going home in the city for a little more than a day in a week. Of late I am doing just that- living in a small town, traveling in villages six days a week, and coming home to the city once a week on Sundays and holidays. It is a little more than six months since I am doing this mind numbing routine and I have not yet got used to it. It isn’t entirely new though, this experience, to me since I’ve led a similar life nearly fifteen years back when I first joined this job in a godforsaken part of the state. At that time I had this experience for three and half years without a break. Maybe it is one reason why I can't help having a healthy contempt for those who live in the cities (especially Hyderabad) leading comfortable lives with 24X7 power supply, good roads, lot of hotels and every comfort one can imagine. Of course, I don’t detest everyone but only those who don’t have a clue about life in the countryside.

I had never imagined that I would be doing a job that would take me into the villages to work with farmers. It is only one thing I like about my job and nothing else. I am glad I am having such an experience because not many are fortunate to know about life in the villages almost on a daily basis. Mahatma Gandhi was not very far off the mark when he said that India lives in the villages. For those who don’t know, to begin with let me say it is where the food we eat comes from, from the fields, that is. I don’t want to talk here about how hard the farmer toils to grow his crops because one cannot understand it unless one sees it with one’s own eyes. Even after seventeen years in this job I am yet to fully comprehend the range of troubles the Indian farmer has to face. The biggest problem, in my view is that of social discrimination. Every one tends to place the farmer on a lower scale of importance. Just because he wears a dhoti, does manual labour and works in the fields farmers are treated like they don’t deserve any respect. They think that every one in the villages is a country bumpkin. This is what I hear almost every day in every village I visit. Country bumpkins they might be, but they are open, deferential and are a lot more sensible when it comes to certain things. At least they don't pee in full public view like they do in Hyderabad.

There have been a lot of changes in the recent years- we have mobiles phones with more features than we can understand, we have more satellite channels than we can watch, we have faster planes, important medical breakthroughs and what not but the farmer is at the same place he was decades ago. The crops are the same, the yields are the same and just about every thing is the same except the prices which are beyond anyone’s reach. Even after twenty five years I foresee no development. Sometimes it is frustrating to learn that farmers are not aware how much fertilizer to use, what pesticides to spray and other vital information he must have to grow a better crop. Even after so many years with so many technological advances if the farmer is ignorant then it isn’t likely that he will learn in the years to come. Something must be done to improve things in the villages, especially for the farmers. Sometime in the future I hope to address this issue in my own way, on the national platform. Watch this space.