Gandhi Journal Article-I ( MARCH 2017 )
Relevance of Gandhian principles in Agriculture
By Balamurali Balaji
Agriculture is the ancient, essential and the foremost important occupation in the world. Man began systematic cultivating of plants and crops thousands of years ago and produced food for the very basic need of life. In order to meet the needs of everyone, he ought to adopt various methods of cultivation, store grains and the produces, and enrich the ways of consuming the produces. He had to fight with the nature, the primary threat the agricultural farms face every day that includes sunlight, heat, rainfall, soil and other climatic conditions. As the methods of cultivation evolve, the risks also develop for the cultivators to obtain the effective yields as expected.
Today’s risks are different from what the farmers dealt in the yesteryears. Most of the risks are artificially created, and some are politically motivated. The government and the administration have been playing a double role of educating the farmers on appropriate methods of cultivation on one hand and denying the rights of the farmers in implementing those methods on the other. Farmer’s profession has been highly politicized when it comes to accruing loans, grants, resources and lastly in selling the produces too.
The agricultural sector has gone in to the exorbitant state of horrified scenes that include farmer suicides, desiccated crops, and dried lands with no water. Deaths due to starvation and lack of nourished food are another tragic affair going on in the country.
What Gandhi can do in such critical situation? Do farmers become greedier? Or, do they have something learn from the teachings of Gandhi to sustain prevailing conditions that throw them out of their profession succumbing to natural and artificially created atmosphere in the field of agriculture? This article broadly explores the agricultural scenario and tries to answer these questions.
Today’s risks are different from what the farmers dealt in the yesteryears. Most of the risks are artificially created, and some are politically motivated. The government and the administration have been playing a double role of educating the farmers on appropriate methods of cultivation on one hand and denying the rights of the farmers in implementing those methods on the other. Farmer’s profession has been highly politicized when it comes to accruing loans, grants, resources and lastly in selling the produces too.
The agricultural sector has gone in to the exorbitant state of horrified scenes that include farmer suicides, desiccated crops, and dried lands with no water. Deaths due to starvation and lack of nourished food are another tragic affair going on in the country.
What Gandhi can do in such critical situation? Do farmers become greedier? Or, do they have something learn from the teachings of Gandhi to sustain prevailing conditions that throw them out of their profession succumbing to natural and artificially created atmosphere in the field of agriculture? This article broadly explores the agricultural scenario and tries to answer these questions.
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