Rural rejuvenation- let’s take the challenge Taking stock - What is happening to village life? The Indian villages, particularly, the rural youth are struggling to come to terms with the fast changing socio-economic reality of today’s India. Urbanisation, migration, value conflicts and changing life styles are driving youth of today. In this context and village youth are left with two options: Option-1. Stay back in the villages and live in a chaotic atmosphere amidst poverty with no hope of dignified living. Be a potential target to be recruited by local political hooligans to serve their own cause and live with complete erosion of self dignity and self worth and struggle day and night to make both ends meet. Watch the idiot box and get worked up on what you think is missing in your life day in and day out and with a sense of deprivation all around. OR Option-2. Migrate to the cities and live in most unhealthy atmosphere. Take to crime if need be. Be the cleaners, drivers, chaprasi, house maids, construction workers and what not and with no hope or skill to match their well educated and skilled city counterparts in wealth or lifestyle and same time bring back all kinds of diseases and problems to villages. Obviously a recipe for fatalism to set-in Most of them seem to choose the second option! The Result Old Parents are left behind with nobody to care at times of need. Agriculture is getting abandoned. Fertile fields are getting fallowed. There is food shortage everywhere. Government policies are not encouraging to work hard and earn livelihoods in villages. There is complete failure of the government extension mechanism to make agriculture based vocations attractive to village youth. Agriculture appears to be the last option if they can think of an alternative. Agriculture continues to be a big gamble. The money earmarked for agriculture development gets systematically siphoned off. Administrative decentralisation, with its lofty ideals notwithstanding, has helped only breed corruption in villages. Villages are divided on lines of caste and political affiliations making villages most wretched places to live. Thanks to the poor educational standards, village youth cannot compete with their city counterparts. With their exposure to the outside world, they are also in no mood to return to agriculture with the perceived notion of drudgery and uncertainty associated with it. The semi-monetised village economy cannot be allowed for long to struggle and coexist with fully monetised urban economy. This will annihilate the rural economy and livelihoods. This will be a too big a price to pay in the long run. Farmers subsidise food production through their unaccounted and cheap labour and other resources. The family labour is never counted. Agriculture prices (even the support prices) are not fixed based on cost of production. What a shame! There is talk of open market mechanisms to encourage better competition within and outside the country. However, time and again agriculture prices get squeezed on one pretext or the other. Exports get banned, imports get subsidized to suit the popular mood in the country. If the onion prices go up, the parliament comes down. However, if a doctor charges a hefty fee in the name of consultation, medicine prices go up, a shirt gets sold at Rs 2000, nobody seems to notice. Farmers have no choice but to pay the market prices for whatever they want to buy such as books, soaps, tooth paste, medical expenses, clothes, shoes etc. Pricing mechanism for agriculture produce is in shambles. Even after so many advances in technology, farmers have to depend on the ubiquitous middle men for their favor to sell whatever is produced in the villages. There is very little regulation in the so called regulated markets. Our own sons and daughters work for MNCs to device innovative and aggressive marketing strategies to exploit the villagers. Media plays along. Consequently, village shops are flooded with gutkha packets in attractive strips. Shampoos get sold in such attractive packages as if nothing else is missing in their lives. There are daily innovations to sell what is not needed in the villages, and not to speak if the liquor stream that flows in every village to feed the coffers of the Govt treasuries. There is cynicism all around. Villagers have lost confidence on the government and outsiders. Worst still, they have lost confidence in themselves. There is callousness everywhere. A sense of despair prevails. I am sure this is not the picture of the resurgent India that all of us hope for. Beyond just a thought, can we do something in this regard? Yes, a lot can happen if we mind. (Read the blog for further literature)
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:44:45 +0000
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