हमारी अग्यानता की जड़ें गहरी व मज़बूत हैं ?

- अगर हमारी अग्यानता की जड़ें गहरी व मज़बूत हैं ? -
- तो क्या आगे का पथ सरल व आसान हो सकता है ?
- शुरुआत कहाँ से की जाय ?

-------
१ - किसके लिए ? -
२ - मसीहा या पथ ? -
३ - लक्षण क्या अौर कैसे ? -
४ - आधुनिक, सरल व साधनों के अनुरूप ? -
५ - ग्यान की कमी, साधनों की कमी, या विश्वास की कमी ? -

Learn One Teach One - Hindi MoinMoin Python Wiki

मोइन मोइन हिन्दी विकी - पाइथन साफ्टवेयर में हिन्दी भाषी तबके के लिए एक आधुनिक सरल व मुफ्त सेवा -

मोइन मोइन हिन्दी विकी - पाइथन साफ्टवेयर में हिन्दी भाषी तबके के लिए एक आधुनिक सरल व मुफ्त सेवा - क्या आप ग्रामीण तबके के हिन्दी भाषी हैं ?

क्या यही एक कारण है जिसकी वजह से पतलून पहनने वाले, व फर्राटे की अँग्रेज़ी बोलने वाले, आपको पछाड़ रहे हैं, अथवा आपको अपने हक से वंचित रखे हैं ?

- यह न समझें कि हिन्दी भाषी होने का अर्थ पिछडे होना है

- हिन्दी पाइथन सीखें व सिखाएँ -

- अौर अपने कार्य पर तत्परता से लग जाएँ

VJAS Letter to Indian President

Ref: VJAS/POI-Visit/175/07 Date : 09/06/2007
An Open Letter to :

Respected Hon'ble President of India –
His Highness Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam

It's not all well in Vidarbha to attend cultural programmes : Farmers are dying – rural economy is on the verge of collapse !
"Would you please spare few minutes to meet unfortunate widows of farmers who killed their lives in extreme distress and due to complete failure of Govt. Policies ruining the entire Indian Rural Economy in the background of so called shining india which resulted agrarian crisis witnessed by Vidarbha as a live lesson to learn!"

Ref : Your proposed visit to Farmers Suicide Epicenter – Yavatmal & Wardha Districts of Vidarbha Region in the State of Maharashtra.
Respected His Highness Dr. Abdul Kalamji,

You are well aware that, since last couple of years our organization – Vidarbha JanAndolan Samiti, is raising the issue of plight of poor farmers who are in extreme distress & suffering the heat of failure of Govt. policies, which has resulted in complete collapse of Indian Rural Economy and perhaps Vidarbha Region has been branded as Epicenter of farmers suicides and is witnessing a live lesson to learn.

From the days Your Honour occupied the coveted post of President of India, we have been keeping you informed about the plight of farmers & agrarian community in Vidarbha and their distressed conditions. We have also kept Your Honour posted regularly with the facts & figures of the ruining Indian Rural Economy and always prayed for your humble intervention in the interest of justice to the farmers & Rural India.

Hon'ble Mr. Sir, you may recall that since last two years, everyday in the morning, we have been mailing Your Honour the updated list containing names, addresses & other relevant details of the unfortunate farmers whose continued series of suicides due to extreme distress conditions prevailing in the Vidarbha Region of Maharashtra State, is heating the National & International news sense. We also submitted a detailed report containing the facts how Prime Minister Relief Package has failed to address the basic issues.

We are extremely sorry that we neither received any reply from your office on our various mails / fax / letters sent to you almost daily nor came to know any action is initiated by you on such a serious issue of plight of farmers in Vidarbha Region.

We regret that your office have not addressed issue in a manner it would have been, considering the gravity, seriousness & intensity of the subject. Perhaps this might be due to your busy schedule.

Now we understand that, you are visiting Yavatmal & Wardha Districts of Vidarbha Region of Maharashtra State for some cultural & educational programmes as Guest of Honour. While we propose to welcome & extend best wishes to you for your proposed visit to Yavatmal & Wardha Districts of Vidarbha Region, we would like to request you for sparing few minutes for the grief ridden unfortunate families & widows of farmers who killed themselves due to continued plight & miserable life being experienced by entire Rural India, economy of which is in extreme broken condition and due to that the farmers at large are constraint to commit suicides. Vidarbha agrarian crisis is a live example of how we are proceeding in a Global Economy in which issues of Rural India & farmers have thrown to back benches. Yavatmal & Wardha are the worst heat districts and therefore, being termed as Epicenter of farmers suicides, if you refer to the reports submitted by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, Former Chairman of National Commission on Farmers & your friend.

We will be highly obliged, if you could spare few minutes to meet unfortunate widows of farmers either at Yavatmal or Wardha and incorporate this meeting in your busy schedule programme and arrange to inform us accordingly.

However, we strongly feel that it is not all well in Vidarbha and therefore, it's not right time for any cultural or dancing session inauguration. Social issues are so grave that, such white collar cultural & dancing session inauguration programmes need to be discarded and we all should address thrust issues of ruining Rural Economy of India and the agrarian crisis. We feel your Yavatmal & Wardha visit must addressed these core issues and due importance may please be given on such a serious subject.

Hon'ble Mr. Sir, We hope you will understand our feelings and do the needful accordingly.

Best Regards,
Yours faithfully,
For VIDARBHA JANANDOLAN SAMITI

KISHORE TIWARI
PRESIDENT

Some Ideas, Many words, Few Rupees

NDC and Agriculture - Krishi Bhasha Sambhrant Varga Aur Bharat -
Right Language, Wrong Direction : By Devinder Sharma

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had time and again promised to launch a major initiative for the revival of the ailing farm sector. Addressing recently the 53rd meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) in New Delhi, he used the right vocabulary to highlight the enormity of the prevailing agrarian crisis.

If words alone could deliver, Congress-led UPA Coalition would have done it long ago. But like the story of the four blind men and the elephant, the Prime Minister, his Cabinet colleagues and the 29 chief ministers who were present continued to shoot in the dark. Three years into power, it is quite apparent the government has no clue as to what needs to be done to resurrect agriculture.

It was almost a year back when Mr Manmohan Singh had visited the suicide-prone belt of Vidharbha and announced a relief package of Rs 3,750 crores. Embarrassed at no let-up in the number of farmer suicides, he had subsequently said that the relief measures would begin to show results after six months. It sure did. Six months after the Prime Minister’s visit, the suicide rate doubled. From one farmer suicide every eight hours, it is now one every four hours.

The Rs 25,000 crore booster for new farm initiatives to be launched by states in the next four years, and the 14-point resolution adopted by the NDC which aims at achieving four per cent growth in agriculture by the end of the 11th five-year plan, falls in the same category. With the entire focus on integrating domestic agriculture with global economy, and bringing in agribusiness, corporate agriculture and food retail as the saviour, the roadmap being chalked out is likely to lead to further despair.

Ploughing Rs 25,000 crore into agriculture may seem like a mammoth effort to double the growth rate in agriculture. For each of the 29 states, the average support will not exceed Rs 1000 crore, which is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. Moreover, what is not being visualised is that the farm crisis has nothing to do in terms of growth rate. It essentially revolves around declining sustainability in agriculture and the economic viability of farming. Whatever be the new location-specific schemes the states may launch, nothing significant can be expected unless the real farm income goes up.

Take Punjab, the food bowl of the country. Farm indebtedness, both in the formal and informal sector, is around Rs 26,000 crore, more than the Centre’s total pledged allocation for the entire country. No amount of renewed thrust on increasing crop productivity, and that too without restoring the highly devastated natural resource base, as well as raising farm incomes, will revive agriculture. However, the 14-point resolution dividing responsibilities between the Central and the State governments makes little mention of sustainability and boosting farm incomes.

To expect the agricultural universities and the state extension machinery to draw up research plans considering region specific priorities taking agro-climatic conditions, natural resource issues and technology into account is a tall order given that the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has already moved away from subsistence to commercial agriculture. The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture Research, Development and Marketing, launched in early 2006, provides for a diametrically opposite research direction.

The crucial issue of technology fatigue cannot be addressed without first ascertaining what and where has the 1st Green Revolution gone wrong. Instead of pushing 2nd Green Revolution (read agribusiness), the effort should have been to draw a balance sheet and then prepare a cropping pattern plan based on the availability of natural resources. For instance, it does not make any sense to cultivate sugarcane and cotton in the arid and parched lands of Rajasthan.

The action plan only focuses on improved seed supply, fertiliser availability and revamping of state agriculture extension system to reduce yield gaps. It also makes it mandatory for states to make amendments in Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act by March 2008, which will allow a variety of marketing trappings including contract farming and corporate agriculture. In essence, the entire focus of the farm strategy is to allow the private sector to take control of agriculture.

Although till date, 16 states have amended the APMC Act, some wholly and others partially, the fact remains that the entire effort of the government is to dismantle the food procurement and public distribution system in the days to come. By amending the APMC Act, the government is actually encouraging development of linkages to markets through a variety of instruments including contract farming and corporate agriculture. Such a system has already played havoc with wheat procurement forcing the country to turn into the world’s biggest importer of the golden grain.

Setting up a time-bound Food Security Mission by enhancing production of wheat, rice, pulses and edible oils comes at a time when the UPA government itself is lowering the custom tariff thereby allowing cheaper imports. Integrating Indian agriculture with global economy defeats the very purpose of ensuring food security. Take the case of edible oils. India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils in 1993-94. Ever since the government began lowering the tariffs, edible oil imports have multiplied turning the country into the biggest importer. Small farmers growing oilseeds and that too in the rainfed areas of the country had to abandon production in the light of cheaper imports.

Autonomous liberalisation of the farm sector has already seen import surges. Agriculture commodity imports have gone up by 300 per cent between 2000-2004. Coconut oil imports for instance increased from 7291 metric tonnes in 2004-05 to 22,307 metric tonnes in 2005-06. The import of pepper similarly increased from 2186.3 tonnes in 1995-96 to 17,725.3 tonnes in 2004-05. These are not isolated cases. Imports of spices and plantation crops including tea and coffee have been on an upswing. Importing food commodities is like importing unemployment.
Not even remotely concerned, the government is planning to further open up farm imports under the Free Trade Agreement with the ASEAN countries. In the years to come, import tariffs on wheat, rice, pulses and edible oils – the crops that are considered crucial for food security – are to be further lowered. Cheaper imports will negatively impact food security. Unless of course the government thinks food security can be assured by buying food off-the-shelf.

For a country like India, with 60-crore farmers, such a policy imperative will spell doom. Indian farmers are not only producers but also consumers. What is needed is a farming system that allows production by the masses in a sustainable and viable way.
PM and NDC - http://docs.google.com/View?docid=df7vhcvn_0f3hjs7

1001 Suggestions

This is a blog for recording the "1001 Brilliant Suggestions" for what the Indian farmer must do to stop committing suicides because of agrarian distress, and to start sharing the optimism of Indian politicians, economists, bureaucrats regarding Incredible India.

While Indian farmers do have some idea about their situation, we will be asking farmers in a separate excercise what they want from other Indians. Right now, only those who are not dependant on agricultural incomes, and have basically, non agricultural incomes to sustain them, in their day to day living, will usually have better and more relevant ideas, of what the Indian kisan, ought to do, to escape his seemingly depressing and downhill progressing situation.

So here in this blog, we will try and collect 1001 most brilliant ideas of non agriculturists, on what the farmer should be doing and what the government should be doing to improve the lot of farmers. Once we reach the figure of 1001 most brilliant suggestions, we will try to put them up before a farmers panchayat for ratification before being presented to the President of India for further suitable action.

Please note, for giving constructive and acceptable suggestions, it is essential that you have non agricultural sources of income, for yourself and your family, and should be able to prove non agricultural sources of income if required. This will ensure consistency of the suggestions about Indian agrarian distress and will give a bird's eye view of the situation in Indian villages.

Please note we welcome people with guaranteed, as well as non guaranteed, sources of income. The only condition is, it should not be based on agriculture.

So if you are a politician, a bureaucrat, a student's leader, a journalist, a media professional, an economist, a government employee, an IT professional, a scientist, an NRI, or any other such non agricultural professional, with some basic guaranteed income or non guaranteed basic incomes, please feel free to submit your suggestions.

In case you come across some suggestions of other knowledgeable people, please do tell us about them, quoting the sources.

Please try to be brief in your suggestions. Suggestions in the form of brief action points, will be best.
Suggestions will be later categorized in categories of :
1. For the Central and state governments
2. For the politicians, in power or in opposition, and big industrialists
3. For professionals like scientists, teachers, defence forces, IT professionals, urban rich, urban middle class, urban poor
4. For landless sections of rural population
5. For students and coming generations
6. For the media
7. For non farming sections of Indian population who have left villages in last 10 years.
8. For families of farmers
9. For farmers themselves.