A little spark to think towards youths and farming.

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In ‘Everybody Loves A Good Drought’, P. Sainath says “poverty line provides conceptual rationalization for looking at the poor as a ‘category’ to be taken care of. It does not take into account important aspects of poverty such as ill health, low educational attainments, geographical isolation, ineffective access to law, powerlessness in civil society and caste and gender based disadvantages.”

“My dear son, as we are become old and we cannot go to field as previous so now it is the time to handover our work to you, you please take care our 10 acre land and we wish every year you should get good yield”. The reply of the son is  “ father as you know now all my friends are going to city to earn and some of my friends are enjoying their life in city, In this village what can I get? always going to field and farming then I should wait for crop yield and finally I can get yearly income that to not reasonable profits for our crop so, I am also thinking of move from here by selling this to nearby Industrialist, you can also come with me after when I will get settled their or otherwise you can live here with labour”. One day I was going to college in that time I heard this conversation of one of the families in the village, suddenly I stopped their itself and my mind started to think present scenario of rural youth , farming and migration!

The rural youths are the group which consist the half of the world’s youth’s population and these are the people who are most effected by poverty. Whereas agriculture is the backbone of the India as you know, the agricultural workforce is estimated to be 286 million in 2010; it is decreased to 234 million in 2001. But the percentage of total workforce engaged in agriculture has fallen from 58% in 2001 to 55% in 2010. At the same time, the contribution of agriculture to GDP fell from 23.2% to 17.7%. Despite a bigger workforce in agriculture, the contribution of agriculture in the Indian economic growth is less. But when we see in the rural area in farming activities most of the population is old age people. Where are the youths? They are migrating to the city .But why? They have limited access to the education health and also job opportunities also. In a country with 600 million farmers, in this 40 present are willing to leave farming.  First they went for education, and once completion of education they got good job and city life attracting to them so there is no question of return back to village and continue farming. From the beginning itself farmers facing so many problems, at present labour problem is the one of the major problems. lack of labours, In farming physical work is more and income is yearly and also it is depend upon the nature, so youths wants modern life and good quick income that is why they are settling in city. I agree but just think of future!! Who will produce the food? Up course the modernisation and globalisation are effected on agriculture positively, I agree with that but more than it has affected negatively.

I would like to give one example: Nearby my village called Malagimane, One family with having father mother and son. They are the one of the richest family in that village with 7 acre arecanut plantation land. It gives around 7,00,000 income to them, but now his son is studying MCA in Bangalore he is not ready to do farming and father and mother become old and they cannot do farming as they were doing early so now their half of the yield declining.

In case of small and marginal farmers they are selling their land and they are migrating to urban for seeking another occupation. But now a day nobody is ready to purchase agriculture land. Even If somebody will purchase then they will not use for farming. Government and so many NGO’s are implementing many programs and technologies to promote agriculture and allied activities but in rural area most of the youths are not there in this case a most of the farmers illiterate and now they are not able to do much work and they do not know how to use modern technology if they know then also they cannot work with this efficiently.

I am not saying that turning of youth’s mentality towards modern, easy life is totally wrong but at the same time they should take care of their parents occupation and youths can bring change in the system so when they think about their own life in that time they should think about society also why because farmer is the food provider without him rest all are nil, for the balance of the system and sustainability of the agriculture youths take important role and they must realise it. If farmers are not there then what you will eat? You have good job, enough money, but where is the food? In some extent you can import from other countries but developing countries like India it always possible and what about the poor people? While talking about equality as a development professional, new economic policies, Modernisation and Liberalisation, Globalisation are for implemented to develop a county but if it is not taking care of the poor or marginalised people then how India would become a developed country? Here I am putting set of questions because as we are youth we should think of it.

 

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