After a long gap of 25 years my parents were fond of getting back into farming lands. Especially my dad has been way too keen to dirty his hands in soil. Though we hail from a farming background, my parents moved to Bangalore from Chittoor. There were a number of reasons for this move. Very first thing was water scarcity. The ground water levels in Chittoor is so bad, most of the conventional irrigation wells have no water even today. Drilling a bore well is a kind of lucky dip for agricultural purposes!
To simply sum it up, the farmers in that region rely predominantly on rains during monsoons. Ground water level increases during rainy season which lasts till February or March. As soon as the summer starts, people feel the pinch for drinking water as well. There aren’t any rivers in this part of the earth though the lord Venkateshwara’s Tirumala-Tirupati temple isn’t too far. If the rains aren’t good enough, farmers go through a real bad year. Even if it rains, the electricity to run irrigation pump sets play havoc with farmers lives. We crib if the power is cut off during summer for an hour or two in cities. But in rural India, there wont be power for more than 10 hours a day through out the year! That too the power is split in 2 phase and 3 phases at different times. Two phase power is usually for lighting purposes while 3 phase is for pump sets. Seven hours of un-interrupted power for pump sets is considered to be a kind of gift for people in this region.
Having said that, people still make their lively hood through agriculture. Gone are the days when my grand parents were breeding silk worms apart from paddy and ground nut farming. Now most of the land is converted for mango plantation due to all the above mentioned reasons apart from the severe lack of human resource availability. The remaining land is used for ground nut cultivation based on rainy seasons. Very minimal land being utilized for paddy fields in recent times. There are plenty of mango pulp extraction and processing factories that have started in past few years. People around this region are attracted to 9am to 6pm of standard working hours, monthly salary, pick up and drop by these factories to door steps etc., So, not much of greenery around, instead industrialization roots have started to grow stronger!
Why am I writing all these things? Yes, here comes the main stream attention. On one hand, we all know that the forest area is decreasing day by day. At the same time, we are abandoning farming lands in favor of industries. Due to this, production of food grains is decreasing. Even if you try to take up agriculture as a full time profession, there is a severe scarcity of man power. Even if available, the man power has become so costly, the final crop cost is no where profitable for the farmer. To add to all these burns, our democratic government has introduced schemes like Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme with benefits like Rs 2/- per kilo of rice. Most of the farm labors work for 5-6 days a month which earns them about Rs 600/-. Spend about Rs 50 for 25 kilos of rice through PDS and live with remaining money for rest of the month or use it for their liquor habits. Again go and work whenever the money is needed to satisfy their habits. Instead of promoting the hard work based incentives, I am sad to see some of the beneficial schemes like REGS turning into promoting laziness among rural population in India.
Despite all this, we expect the food grain prices not to shoot up… there is one more question in my mind… Where are we heading to?
vineeta says
I saw ur comment on my blog and couldnt resist checking yours! I feel this post has raised a very valid point! The urbanized part of India is not at all aware of the existence of Rural India and how it works. I atleast feel that there should be a compulsory course program for every kid before graduation which will take them to this part of India and show them how our country is actually works! You never know we may get some good ideas and help from our younger generation when they actually get a feel of it 🙂
Mohan says
Hi Vineeta, thanks for visiting my blog and commenting here! I would agree with you partly. Urban India does know how Rural India is getting urbanized, yet no one is willing to give a deep thought on how to tackle the menace. Our governments talk about SEZ’s and all that at the cost of fertile farm lands. I am not against industrialization, but the fact is there is enough barren land to promote industries.
We have already started to feel the effect… let us see when our great leaders realize the need to address this issue.
smi says
unfortunately their so who is in US for past 7 years is also fighting for it 🙂
smi says
lack of Human Resource availability 🙂 there was a time when our elders sold the farms in the village or gave the attorney to others(Mostly relatives) so that they could come to the city and work for the betterment of the family ..22 years later I see the same people quarreling over this property.
Did they feel the need ..Need of money ,need of authority ,need of the farms ..or had they taken leave of their senses 22 years back.
Mohan says
Not that they had taken leave, just that they have started to realize the need of hour and wanting to get back to square one where the roots started initially 🙂
Elaya Kumar S says
I am from Vellore (40 kms from Chittoor) in Tamil Nadu. I want to share with you a particular observation. Now you know well about the four lane NH connecting Chennai with Bangalore and the same passes through Vellore. Earlier during my frequent visits to Chennai from Vellore I used to see on both sides of the road, during my journey of around 210 minutes, vast stretches of agricultural land with various pulsating crops like rice and sugarcane.
But now during my journeys to Chennai from Vellore, which takes now at about 180 minutes, in spite of the Golden Quadrilateral project, I see on both sides of the road, mushrooming concrete buildings displaying various engineering colleges/polytechnics, amusement parks and SEZ industrial parks. I could not suppress my disappointment by not seeing any stretch of land on either side of the road having any agricultural crops.
This leads to the same question: Quo vadis?
What are we going to leave for the future generation?
Are not food and shelter fundamental necessities and needs?
Elaya Kumar S
Mohan says
Very good thought… your question is as good as mine! All I can say right now is that we are shooting ourselves in foot while putting up a brave face in the name of development. There is no second thought, we have started paying for the crimes that we have committed with nature and it is only the beginning!
Raghavendra says
The day is not too far for us to get back to farmlands! As we say in the stock market, we should go by fundamentals and not by the mad rallies 🙂
Manjunath says
Glad!!! that your parents are still owning farmland in village….. my grandfather when he came to Bangalore in 1938 donated the little land what he had to temple and settled here so our two generations my father and me was born in Bangalore so we have no touch of village life …. and btw what weird is my father visited only once to our village and i never seen how my village is 🙂
Mohan says
Oh no! we don’t own any land there. We sold it all when we shifted to Bangalore. However my grand parents land is still there which is cultivated sparingly at the moment due to all the mentioned reasons. But the good fact is that we have relatives still there and can spend some good time away from city life whenever we want 🙂