Monday, December 27, 2010

A super farmer in Indian farmers



Yes, you are reading it correctly and we used to visualize the Indian farmers are always distressed and debt- ridden. But this time I am stating about a big farmer Amitabh Bachchan, a Bollywood's premier action hero, and super star in Indian cinema. Superstar turned to farmer in real life after long journey of his reel life, I don’t want to dig deeper that what kind of circumstances dragged him to become a farmer. However we should appreciate him to be a part of the farmers’ community and farmers also have to be proud such a biggest celebrity chooses his profession as agriculture.

In so many media interviews, he himself insisted that he has right to be called as FARMER. The Superstar recently came in to news which symbolically plowing his agriculture land and trying to prove that he is a farmer. I don’t think that this twitter addicted super star is familiar with the farming practices, crops and agriculture related subjects. I never see his comments on agriculture or farmers’ issues in any social networking websites or his blog in spite he proclaimed as a farmer. In the movies, we used to see the hero eventually bash the bad guys and save the people in critical situations. I expected the same thing from this Super Farmer that he can do something for the farmers towards his social responsibility.

This super farmer is a brand ambassador for Gujarat state…Can’t he look at the perils of Gujarat farmers? This so-called farmer has been living in Mumbai…Can’t he think about Maharashtra cotton farmer’s suicides? The assessment of Bachchan brand was estimated at Rs 700 crores. He used to collect Rs.3-4 crores for each advertisement and Rs.1-2 crores for each episode of TV programs. I would like to state some of the generous persons who shared their earnings for public interest i.e. Azim premji, Shiv Nadar, Narayan murthy and so on. Of course…..this is not about the monitory contribution, it’s all about the mission. As per my knowledge if a celebrity really works towards the society that definitely make an incredible help to the people.

Being such an inspiring and an influence person, Mr. Amitabh can do a lot to the farmers. He can organize the fundraising events to help the farmers or he may work with any farmers’ welfare organization to uplift the farmers or he can adopt a village to implement good agriculture practices or not the least he can carry out a nationwide message campaign against suicides of distressed farmers which shall create courage and hope. I would like to appreciate Mr. Ameer khan since he produced the movie Peepli [Live] which depicted the farmers’ plights and also he joined in Narmada Bachao Andolan for poor farmers’ water rights and fair compensation for land loses.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

December 23rd- KisanDivas

Entire India celebrates Farmers day every December 23rd which was Chaudhary Charan Singh Birthday.Kisan Divas is recognition of his valuable services rendered to the farmers of India. Chaudhary Charan Singh is credited to formulate and implement the famous Zamindari Abolition Act. His passionate appeal and magnetic persona united all the farmers against the moneylenders and landlords. He was also a very effective writer and penned his thoughts on farmers and their problems and solutions. Charan Singh passed away on 29 May 1987.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Heavy rains whipped the Farmers

The depression in Bay of Bengal turned into disaster for Andhra Pradesh farmers, their crops were badly affected with intensified thunderstorms. Heavy showers and thunderstorms all over the districts damaged the crops so much that nothing of the crop remains. The paddy heaps were completely submerged in the flood drowns fields, and the Cotton, Chilly, Corn, Sugarcane which were ready to harvest have gone waste and tobacco was severely damaged in the plantation stage. Total 25.06 lakhs of acers of agriculture crops affected in the rain-hit districts, paddy is 17.84 lakhs of acers and Cotton is 5.83 lakhs of acres among the total. The farmers were shocked to witness their hard grown grain was sinking in floods and the ready-to-be-harvested crops have been spoilt. All the farmers are in tears, frustration, misery with the floods havoc and some farmer’s suicides were reported.

In the 11th 5 years plan, our government set a target of 4% growth in agriculture but this year the agriculture is in retrograde motion. Andhra Pradesh farmers have been facing cyclones in recent months with “Khaimuk”, “Nisha”, “Laila”, “Jal” and most recent heavy rains have caused damage to their crops. Andhra Pradesh has recorded the highest number of floods in 2010 during the last 30years, it will take another 5 years to farmers to recover from all kinds of losses. The government estimates that paddy loss is approx to Rs.2000 crores and farmers have no hope that the mill owners will buy the wet and black colored paddy. Farmers have to spend again to clean the fields from the flood water.

Crop Insurance became a futile exercise, the Agriculture officials are failed to convince the farmers to get the insurance coverage for their crops. Lending Banks are used to endorse the crop insurance while giving the crop loans to the farmers but the most of the loans have given to the land owned farmers. 60% of the farming has been undertaken by the tenant farmers who are not able to get loans from banks since they are not land owners and eventually no insurance coverage. Government has to enumerate the tenant farmers while assessing the crop damages since most of the victims are tenant farmers.

Government has to help the farmers to recover from their perils by paying the compensation by each cropwise. Government should take the steps to buy the paddy which was discolored and soaked in rain water. Fresh loans have to be given for next crop season and the moratorium should be ordered on existing loans. Government has to provide the subsidized seeds, fertilizers and pesticides for upcoming crop season. Government has to come up with a paradigm for crop insurance plan to the tenant farmers since the majority of agriculture land is under lease of them. Government has to support small and marginal farmers otherwise they are unable to bare losses and they can’t keep doing agriculture.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

India economic summit - Agriculture sector

My beloved Mentor Hon'ble Chengal reddy can be seen in the panel discussion.
Mr. Reddy's comments @ 32.30; 49.08 ; 1.07.00 ; 1.25.00



Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum at livestream.com

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Hopeless Telecom Minister - Hapless UPA Government

Indian political and economical structures have been trembling with scams from past few years i.e. IPL, Commonwealth games, Adarsh housing and 2G Telecom. A bunch of corruption scams have been popping up in the country as a part of global economic reforms and development. The culprits for these organized corruptions are mostly politicians, bureaucrats and corporates. The biggest financial and economic crime in India till date is 2G spectrum (Rs.1.76-lakh crore scandal) which was reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The allegation on Ministry of Telecom is that the allotments of 2G spectrum licenses were not justifiable. The former telecom minister A. Raja misused his authority in issuing the 2G licenses to the telecom operators with very minor fee and without transparent method of auction which has caused huge revenue loss to the Indian exchequer.

India has huge telecom market in the world i.e. more than 650 millions of telephone connections. In 2008, the Telecom Ministry issued airwave licenses to some telecom companies for second generation (2G) mobile phone services at Rs1,658 crore for a pan-India (Presence Across Nation) operation in the controversial manner without calling for competitive bids. Later, the auction of airwaves for third generation (3G) services, which got nearly Rs. 63,000 crores and that for broadband access, which fetched over Rs. 35,700 crores. Finally, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India reported that the allocation of 2G spectrum was undertaken in an arbitrary manner and the estimated loss to the exchequer due to under pricing of 2G spectrum was Rs. 160,000 crores.

Everybody used to chant the honesty, nobility, credibility and good governance of Mr. Man Mohan sing, but his clean image got diminished when he was trying to give clean chit to A.Raja. Few months ago, Mr. Man Mohan sing was agonized on crony capitalism in the press meet. If Prime minister wants to act against crony capitalism, then why can’t he sack the scandalous minister whenever the scam confirmed? Why UPA chairperson Ms. Sonia has not taken quick action on Raja scam, as she took the fast decision on Maharashtra chief minister dismissal on Adarsh housing society corruption. The UPA government is reluctant to set off Joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe on 2G spectrum scam. All these tricks on 2g scam seem to be suspicious that Congress party also has its share in this dirty money conspiracy.

The worst thing is that the supreme court of India has doubted about the UPA government legitimacy and asked the government to produce an affidavit to explain why the Prime minister did not act on CAG report. Ironically, Mr. Raja got re-appointed as a Union telecom minister by the UPA-2 government despite the financial crime committed by him in 2008. Recently the CBI revealed the tapes of Nira radia (Corporate PR consultant- http://www.vccpl.com/ ), how she lobbied to reappoint the culprit Raja as a cabinet minister in UPA-2 government. These tapes clearly indicate that how the lobbyists and corporates (Sunil Mittal – Anil) are organize the governments.
Click for RAJA – RADIA Tapes: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268064

However, Mr. Man Mohan and Ms. Sonia are both together have to take the responsibility on this scam. The solution is not simply replacing or dismissal of the minister. The prim minister has to initiate the prosecution on Raja and the money has to be recovered from the culprits and the licenses should be void. Being a UPA Chairperson Ms. Sonia should not suppose to spare dishonest ministers and the coalition partners for simply to remain in power. She has to look for substitute alliance party to get the support for the stable alliance government. Of course, these are all coalition politics.

I used to read about the scams on natural resources like lands, Mines, forests and rivers and now the trend is AIR. I mean that Airwaves also part of the natural resources. Please do comment :YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Barak - The bilateral salesman

US President Mr. Obama completed his three-day visit in India with a bunch of US merchants. India honored the esteemed guest with great state banquets. Obama praised that India is not simply emerging…India has already emerged world power. He made magnificent statements on Indian heritage, culture, science, civilization, Father of nation and so on. Everything went well, everyone was happy. The big question of normal Indian is what was the purpose of his visit? As usually many of them are in the notion of Indo-US strategic partnership and better trade relationships for prosperity. But Mr. President successfully played a role of a salesman to close lucrative deals to USA.

He made splendid statement On India that has an emerged global power. Has India really emerged, Shall we need to believe the same since Obama praised? According to Human Development Index, India has ranked low of 119 among the 169 countries and India is lowly 67th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index. If we still in the notion of emerged nation that’s absolutely foolishness, Obama is simply demonstrating his selling skills by praising the customer (India).He clearly revealed his strategy in Mumbai that his purpose of visit to India is to generate the 50,000 employment opportunities in USA. He closed $10 billion worth of commercial deals with job opportunities like
30 no’s of Boeing 737 aircraft to Spice Jet Airlines (12,970 Jobs),
10no’s of Boeing C-17s military transport planes to Indian air force (22,160 Jobs),
107no’s of GE F414 jet engines to the Indian military (4,440 Jobs),
$917 million worth of Mining equipment and services from Bucyrus International to Sasan Power in Madhya Pradesh (3,460 jobs),
6 no’s heavy duty gas turbines from GE to Reliance Energy (2,650 Jobs) and so on…

No doubt, he has a mission with an organized TODO LIST and strategies to market his products and services but our leaders don’t have the TASK LIST except MENU to arrange the banquets. Our political leaders are simply shaking hands, applauding the Obama’s speech because he praised that India is great and they don’t know what we need to obtain from USA. If the US corporations’ are making such profitable deals with India, why our politicians can’t propose the Dow Chemicals (Successor Company of Union Carbide) to arrange the compensation to Bhopal Gas disaster victims and cleaning the chemical wastage in Bhopal. No politician has pressurized the issue of Business Process Outsourcing from USA which has been providing lot of jobs to India and some of the Tech business men have asked inconsequential questions like H1 fees issue rather than unique Software solutions propositions. Our leaders didn’t mention to waive the US farm subsidies especially on cotton which is very badly effecting to our cotton farmers due to subsidized cotton dump from USA. When we open our markets for US agribusiness for the companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Cargill… why can’t we propose cotton textile, apparel exports to US since we have sufficient cotton stocks.

Mr. Obama has also failed to talk about Pakistan connection in 26/11 attacks and Kashmir issue to pursue the peace. He mentioned that Indo- US strategic partnership is going to be WIN-WIN relationship to both countries but he never committed on outsourcing which gives employment to Indian professionals. United States is pushing India to remove all trade barriers to export their products and India liberated most of the policies according to USA pressure. Some of them are…
Allowing American Food Giants (McDonalds, KFC, Pizzhut ….)
Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (Monsanto, Cargill, DUPONT...)
National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority bill (Genetically Modified produces)
India is going to accept foreign direct Investments (Welcome to Wal-Mart)
Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement
As usual defense deals of Fighting Jets, warships, Military Aircrafts
No import tariffs on food grains, Pulses and edible oils

I don’t know... what further more Obama expects from India, Does he want to make India as a DUMPSTER for US products ? I can’t understand the logic in his WIN-WIN scheme.
Please do comment : YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Thursday, October 28, 2010

35 kilograms of Food Security

India is ranked 67th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index by the International Food Policy Research institute.Our National advisory council (NAC) recommended the food security act to 75% of Indians through public distribution systems (PDS) on 23rd Oct, 2010. The proposed food security bill has to be approved in the legislature which is going to be started in next financial year and completely covered by 2014 in all over India. NAC suggested the two broad categories of beneficiaries’ i.e. Priority and General instead of Below Poverty Line (BPL) norms and both these categories will have to be defined by the government.

The 75% of Indians will get the food grains on the subsidized prices who are 90% of rural and 50% of urban.
The Priority category is defined as 46% of rural poor and 28% of urban poor.
The General category is defined as 44% of rural below middle class and 22% of below middle class.
The Priority category household will get 35 kgs of food grains (Rice, wheat, millet) per month with subsidized prices of Rs.3, Rs.2 and Re.1 sequentially.
The General category household will get 20 kgs of food grains (Rice, wheat, millet) per month with the price which is not exceeding half the current minimum support price for the grains.
The scheme would cost the government an additional Rs 15,000 crores in the first phase and it’s going to be Rs 23,231 crore additional cost after the implementation of the final phase. The country would be requiring 58 million tones food grain annually to fulfill this legal commitment.

I believe that some amendments are required in the proposed Food security act. Food security means that not only providing of 35 kilograms of subsidized food grains but that should ensure the nutrition security and health also. Is 35 kgs are enough to feed the family? As per some research norms, the average consumption of food grains in India is 178 kgs/ year/ person (15 kgs /month/person) and the average Indian family size is 4.8 members. So each family must requires the minimum quantity of 65 kgs of food grains. Edible oil and pulses are the good sources for nutritional values and calories. The per capita consumption of edible oils is 13 kgs per year (1.08kgs per month) but it is still less than what nutritionists recommend and lower than world average of 16 kgs. Each household needs 5kgs of edible oil for the nutritional values. The per capita availability of pulses is around 15 kg a year (1.25kgs per month), far below the nutritionists' recommendation of 20 kg per capita. So each family requires 6 kgs of pulses.
 

The Government is implementing several food schemes to provide the supplementary nutrition values among the people i.e. Mid day meals in schools, anganwadi, Nutrition programme for adolescent girls. All these schemes are meant for children, adolescents, pregnant women and lactating women. But, the working class poor people are still in calorie deficient and they definitely need the nutrients to get strength, endurance and productivity at their workplace. As I fell, the comprehensive food security means nutritional security. The edible oil and pulses are essential for human beings to sustain proteins, vitamins and minerals. Inclusion of the both of them with food grains list under PDS is good for unconditional food security or else the hunger will be perennial.

The public distribution systems is not functioning efficiently, it’s all corrupted and controlled by the politicians. The PDS food ration is going to the black markets instead of welfare of poor. Ration cards are the main documents to avail the PDS ration, there is a lot of corruption in issuing ration cards. Take this serious example of Andhra Pradesh… as per Chief Minister’s statement, 2.04 crores of white ration cards were issued to the BPL families. The average family size in Andhra Pradesh is 3.9 per sons. So… the Andhra Pradesh has (2.04 crore families * 3.9 per sons) 7.96 crores of people who are in below poverty line out of 8.0 crores of total population. Is it Andhra Pradesh completely in below Poverty line??????? That’s how the corruption in issuing ration cards to ineligible people.

Simply distributing the food grains with subsidized prices is not going to be end of the hunger. The Government has to focus on production, procuring, preserving and proper distribution of food grains. As everybody knows that the Supreme Court intervention on millions of tonnes food grain wastage due to insufficient storage facilities, the judicial body recommended the government to distribute the starving people instead of letting rotten. The government has to concentrate on food grains storage facilities, infrastructure and supply chain. Food security act will not only serving the poor but also encourages the production of food grains which is direct benefit to the farmers since the consumption pattern is going to be more. India needs to be self sufficient in food grain production to meet this new demand by utilizing the science and technology.However, we welcome the food security bill and wish this legislation is going to fill the empty stomachs of starved poor.

Please do comment: Yashwanthx@yahoo.com

Friday, October 15, 2010

Micro Credit – Macro crisis




The Father of Microfinance and Nobel peace prize winner Mr. Muhammad Yunus would never expect that the social mission of microfinance is going to be bad in India. He is the founder of Grameen Bank and he developed the concept of Micro credit model In Bangladesh to eradicate the poverty in rural community. The fundamental of microfinance / Micro credit is to empower the poor people by giving the small loans with low interest rate. In the past few days, 24 number of rural Micro finance borrowers have committed suicides in Andhra Pradesh who are harassed by the Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs).

The Andhra Pradesh state government has been following the best model of Indira Kranthi Patham by Society for elimination of Rural Poverty (http://www.serp.ap.gov.in/) which arranges the loans from nationalized banks to the Self help groups with subsidized interest rate. In the early 1990s, the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) model was also very successful one in Andhra Pradesh. From the past few years, the micro finance sector is growing massively. Most of MFIs are forcing the poor women to enroll and majority of them are already members in self-help groups who are well nurtured by the Government schemes. They indulge in very unethical practices in collecting their loan money. The MFIs are humiliating and dampen the self respect of the borrowers, those deeds are pushing them to suicides. The MFIs are charging very high interest rates i.e more than 30% per annum from the poor borrowers and enjoying this money with high paid salaries and perks to their CEOs. They are just like private money lenders in corporate way by utilizing the Self Help groups.

On October,14th, the AP state government came out with legislation to control the MFIs. That is a good sign to help the poor rural borrowers from the clutches of fraudulent MFIs. As per new ordinanace, the government is going to help the MFI’s victims by debt-swapping through commercial banks by providing new loans with low interest rates. We hope the new ordinance will control and regulate the Micro finance system and Reserve Bank of India intervention must be required to formulate the guidelines for MFIs. Brief note on ordinance: http://bit.ly/cF1p7a

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Solidarity to 490 Millions of Small farmers

Agriculture in India has long history, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. India is a land of 490 million small farmers of total 600 million and having the average land size of 3.2 acres (1.3 hectares). They are cultivating their small farms with the support of their family members and local labor. Small Farms have always been the most efficient for sustainable and bio-diversified way of agriculture. Small farms have tremendous scope for increasing productivity because the natural capital - the soil, the water, and the ecology can be improved through conservation and rejuvenation.60% of the farm produces comes from the small farms only which are assuring food security, rural employment, generating the revenue in the form of taxes, cess and foreign currency through exports. But India lost her 200,000 of quality farmers from past 15 years who are committed suicides and around 100 million of farmers are living on less than a dollar per day. 40% of the small farmers are being forced to leave the agriculture and migrating to towns and cities.

Farmers are dragged in to such kind of plights due to various reasons like spurious seeds, poor quality pesticides, non availability of fertilizers, delayed monsoons, ineffective irrigation system, mounting debts, exploitation by private money-lenders and banks, lack of insurance, Government polices and so on… The main problems for the ill-fated farmers are their Indebtedness and credit crisis, because the income from their farms is not sufficient to their farm investment and their generic living expenditure. The farm incomes are connected with the farm produce prices which are not remunerative and farmers are getting very less share for their produces paid by the consumer. Commercial Banks are also responsible for farmers’ perils, they are not extending enough agriculture loans to farmers. Some small farmers are not qualified to avail the credit facilities due to bankers’ abusive norms which are forcing them to turn to private money lenders with exorbitant interest rates. The government improper models of industrialization are pushing the rural communities off the land. The small farmers are migrating to cities as construction labor, apartment watchmen and positively they don’t want their children as to become farmers. Very few young people are coming into farming … If this situation continues, India can’t expect food security and it’s going to be the REPUBLIC OF HUNGER.

In fact, India needs small farmers because her peace, her land sovereignty, her food sovereignty is in their hands. They are the pillars of the country’s development. There is a need to encourage the small farmers by providing easy access to credit facilities, Reserve Bank of India has to control the rural banks/commercial bank to extend the agri loans to small farmers and Tenant farmers. The government has to make sure the supply of quality seeds, prompt distribution of fertilizers, extension support, marketing, and insurance to small farmers. Public Private Partnership is required to promote organic farming among the small farmers. Government should provide subsidized for farm equipment, proper training and techniques to use innovative tools to avoid physical drudgery. Basic literacy and women farmers’ encouragement programmes should be evolved to their family and rural community development. The government should enact the collective farming / Contract farming with the modality of merging small farm land holdings under farmers cooperatives, make the farmers as independent share holder and collectively utilizing the supply chain/value chain with farmers operated marketing societies or private processors. (Just like dairy cooperatives). Government should reinforce the rural communities by providing basic welfare amenities like drinking water, electricity, transportation, primary health and sanitation.

We hope…all the small farmers avail the modern technologies and market opportunities to strengthen their economic status as well as nation’s prosperity. This is a part of campaign to get the United Nations to declare International Year of Family farming. Please Visit: http://www.familyfarmingcampaign.net/

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Land – The Common Property Resource


రాష్ట్రం అంటే మనుషులు మాత్రమే కాదు , రాష్ట్రం అంటే మట్టి కూడ.. గురజాడ గారు దేశమంటే మనుషులు అని ఉదాహరించినా, వాస్తవ పరిస్థితులలో మన రాష్ట్రం పరిస్థితి చూస్తే మట్టి కూడ అని అనిపిస్తుంది. నిజం చెప్పాలంటే రాష్ట్రం అనగా అడవులు,కొండలు, గనులు, పంట పొలాలు, ఇండ్లు, ఇండ్ల స్థలాలు, ఖరీదైన వ్యాపార భవన సముదాయాలు, రింగు రోడ్లు, SEZ లు , టెక్నాలజి పార్కులు .. ఇవే అనే  అభిప్రాయం మన పాలక వర్గానికి వచ్చిన తర్వాత .. రాష్ట్రం అంటే మనుషులు అనే భావం ఎప్పుడో   పోయింది. భూమికి , మనుషులకి మధ్య  అభివృద్ధి పేరుతో కార్పోరేట్ కారిడార్లు తెరుచుకున్న తర్వాత  మట్టికి మనిషికి మధ్య ఉన్న జీవాత్మక అనుభందంతో పాటు వ్యాపారత్మక అనుభందం బలపడింది. గ్యాసు పైపులైన్లు, పోర్టులతో, పవర్ ప్రాజక్టుల పేరుతో  భూమి  అంతా ప్రజలనుండి కొన్ని కుటుంబ సంస్థల చేతులలోకి మారిన తర్వాత... ఇంకెక్కడి అభివృద్ధి , ఇంకెక్కడి శాంతి సౌభాగ్యాలు ..నిత్యం ఉద్యమాలు, కాల్పులు ,మరణాలు తప్ప

ప్రత్యేక ఆర్ధికమండళ్ళు ( SEZ) ,భారీ పరిశ్రమలు, అభివృది పనుల పేరుతో మన ప్రభుత్వం లక్షల ఎకరాల భూమి సేకరిస్తూ ఉంది. ఇందులో ఎక్కువ భాగం రైతుల నుండి సేకరించినవే.. అందులో కూడా భూములు పోగొట్టుకున్న రైతులు ఎక్కువమంది రెండు..మూడు ఎకరాలు సాగు చేసుకొని జీవించే పేద  రైతులే. మన ప్రభుత్వం సెజ్ లు మరియు భారీ పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో భూములు తీసుకున్నపుడు, ఆ భూములు పోగొట్టుకున్న రైతులకు ప్రత్యామ్నాయంగా ప్రతి కుటుంబానికి ఉద్యోగాలు కల్పిస్తామని హామీ ఇచ్చింది. కాని కొన్నిచోట్ల అయిదు సంవస్తరాలు అయిన పరిశ్రమల ఏర్పాటు ఇంకా జరుగ లేదు.  ఇప్పుడు ఆ రైతులకు ప్రయోజనం కన్నా నష్టమే ఎక్కువ జరింగిందని చెప్పవచ్చు.  సాగుచేసుకునే అవకాశం లేక, ఇంకా  ప్రారంభించని ఆ పరిశ్రమలలో ఉపాధి దొరకక, పట్టణాలకు వలసలు వెళుతున్నారు. రెక్కల కష్టం, వ్యవసాయం తప్ప మరే ఇతర వృత్తి నైపుణ్యం లేని, పెద్ద చదువులు చదవని ఈ రైతులు..వారి పొలాలలో స్థాపించబోయే  పరిశ్రమలలో మరి  టాయిలెట్లు కడగాలా? రోడ్లు ఊడ్చాలా? కార్లు తుడవాల?  తరతరాలుగా జీవనోపాధి కల్పించి, బంగారం పండించిన తమ స్వంత భూములను  పరాయి వ్యక్తులకు అప్పగించి, వేరొకరి కింద కూలీలుగా ఆత్మవంచనతో మౌనంగా రోదిస్తున్న ఆ రైతుల పరిస్థితిని స్వయం సంవృద్ది అందామా???

బారతదేశ ఆర్ధికాభివృద్ధికి భారీపరిశ్రమలుస్థాపించడం,మౌళిక సదుపాయాలు మెరుగు పరచుకోవడం ఎంత అవసరమో... బారతదేశ ప్రజల ఆహారభద్రతకు..వ్యవసాయభూములను, రైతుల ప్రయోజనాలను కాపాడటం కూడా అంతే అవసరం. ఇటీవల ప్రభుత్వ అంచనా ప్రకారం మన రాష్ట్రంలో అయిదు లక్షల హెక్టార్ల సస్యశ్యామలమైన భూములు పంటకు నోచుకోక బీళ్ళు అయిపోయాయి. పంటలు పండించకపోతే ప్రజలకు ఆహార ధాన్యాలు, నిత్యావసర వస్తువులు  అందుబాటులో ఉండవన్న విషయం ఈ ప్రభుత్వాలకు తెలియదా? ప్రత్యేక ఆర్ధికమండళ్ళు ( SEZ ), భారీ పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో రైతులకు నోటీసులు ఇచ్చి,బెదిరించి,మాయ చేసి కాళ్ళ కింద ఉన్న నేలను లాగేసుకొని, పది మందికి అన్నం పెట్టె  రైతుల పొట్ట కొట్టటమే ఈ ప్రభుత్వం లక్ష్యమా ? పరిశ్రమలు స్థాపిస్తామంటూ రైతుల నుండి భూములను వేల రూపాయలకు కొని దానినే తిరిగి కోట్లకు అమ్ముకుంటూ REAL ఎస్టేట్ వ్యాపారం చేయడం నిజం కాదా? ఈ నిజాన్ని(REAL) అభివృద్ధి అందామా???

Adam smith తన Wealth of Nations (1776) అనే గ్రంధము లో  “The Government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.” అని చెప్పారు.  అధికారం అండతో తమ స్వంత వ్యాపారాలను విస్తరించుకోనే Crony capitalism  ఇప్పుడు ప్రమాదకరంగా ప్రబలుతోంది  అని మన ప్రధానమంత్రి  మన్మోహన్ గారు విలేకరుల సమావేశంలో (Sept 6th , 2010) సెలవిచ్చారు. పంటపొలాలను పరిశ్రమలకు కేటాయించవద్దని చట్టాలు చెబుతున్నా తమ అధికారాన్ని ఉపయోగించుకుని సారవంతమైన భూములను పరిశ్రమల పేరుతో తమ కుటుంబ సంస్థలకు అప్పగించడం Crony capitalism కాదా? విదేశీకంపెనీ పెట్టుబడులను ఆకర్షిస్తున్నాము, వస్తుసేవల రంగాలలో, పారిశ్రామికంగా అభివృద్ధి చెందుతున్నాము, బుల్ కుమ్మేస్తుంది, సెన్సెక్స్ 19,000 దాటింది, GDP పెరిగింది అని గొప్పలు చెప్పుకుంటున్న మన పాలకులకు రోజూ వందల మంది రైతులు మరణిస్తున్న సంగతి తెలియదా? DIL , Sricity , Fabcity ,Emmar ల పేరుతో రైతులకు జీవనోపాధి కల్పించే పచ్చని పంటపొలాలను వదలకుండా కొల్లగొట్టి వారిని బిచ్చగాళ్ళుగా మారుస్తున్న ఈ పరిస్థితిని... India shining అందామా???
పౌర హక్కుగా ఉన్న ఆస్తి హక్కు ఎప్పుడైతే రాజ్యంగ హక్కుగా మారిందో... అప్పటినుండి ప్రభుత్వానికిప్రైవేటు ఆస్తులను ప్రజల ఉపయోగాల కోసం సేకరించే హక్కు (విధానాలతో కూడిన) కలిగింది. చట్టం నిర్దేశించిన విధివిధానాలు, షరతులు పాటించకుండా ప్రభుత్వంలో పెద్దలు దురుద్దేశంతో, ప్రజాప్రయోజనాలను పక్కదారి పట్టిస్తూ ..సమాజంలో అందరికి చెందవలసిన సహజ వనరులను తమ అధికారంతో కొందరే దక్కించుకోవటం మనం ప్రతిరోజు పత్రికలలో చదువుతున్నాము. ప్రస్తుతం కాల పరిస్థితుల ప్రకారం ప్రజలు ఆర్ధికంగా,సామాజికంగా అభివృద్ధి చెందాలంటే... తమ ఉమ్మడి ఆస్తి వనరు అయినటువంటి భూమిపై న్యాయపరమైన అధికారం కోరడం అనేది ఆమోదయోగ్యమైన హక్కు, కాబట్టి ఆస్తిహక్కును కొన్ని విధివిధానాలతో పౌర హక్కుగా మార్చాలని నా అభిప్రాయం. అలా కాకుండా ఇప్పుడున్న పరిస్థితి ఇలాగే కొనసాగితే భవిష్యతులో అభివృద్ధి  చేస్తామంటూ నీరు, గాలి కూడా కొందరి సొత్తు అవుతాయేమో. కనుక దేశమంటే నరులు మాత్రమే కాదు ... ఏ ఒక్కరి ఆధిపత్యం లేని ఉమ్మడి వనరులు కూడా అయితే బాగుంటుంది కదా ...
మీ కామెంట్సు: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com


Friday, August 27, 2010

Future of Farming and Food


           
Food is essential for life and food security is the basic welfare of the state. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, one sixth of world population or more than one billion of people go bed hungry everyday and one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet. According to the Global Hunger Index  for 2009, India is ranked a poor 65th in fighting hunger, and close to 23%of Indians go without food everyday. The noiseless food crisis is the serious problem for growing population. As per US census bureau, by 2050 the world population will be 9.28 Billions. How will the world meet the food needs with existing arable land and natural resources? There are multiple challenges to sustain the food security for growing population.

Agriculture is the core sector for food and economic growth which is laborious profession. Presently, majority of farmers are poor, not well educated and they don’t have finance facilities to upgrade the farming with modern technologies. Irregular, adverse climate conditions and poor farm extension services are discouraging the farm productivity. The farmers’ income dropped down and debts are in raise due to non-remunerative prices and various reasons. Already they started thinking that farming is not much remunerative and 40 per cent of them want to give up farming. Most of the people are migrating to urban areas in search of better, trendy, high- paying white collar jobs. In those circumstances, who will do agriculture and who will produce food for us? The farmers have to be double or even triple to feed the next generation. So the social standing, appreciation and safeguard of farmers should be raised.

As everybody knows we controlled the hunger and famines by introducing high yield, disease resistant, virus modified and hybrid crops named as Green Revolution. So…major investments have to be made with public and private partnership in agriculture science and technologies to develop bumper yielding and draught resistant crops. Genetic engineering has to play vital role for future agriculture to protect the crops and produce the food products with high nutrition values. Organic agriculture is good but only that itself can’t feed the growing population. The agronomists must try to educate the people on taboos and realities of Genetically Modified crops.

Agriculture occupies the 33% of land on earth, it takes 70% of earth’s fresh water and spoils 60% of it. We need 3 liters water for our daily needs and 3000 liters of water required for our daily food needs. The management of water is the key for our food production and water is going to be more expensive in future. The agriculture scientist should use the Biological, DNA solutions to replace the chemical applications for protecting the soil, air and water. Global warming, Climatic change, water shortage is going to effect the crop yields eventually food shortage. We need to develop eco-friendly farming practices to enhance biodiversity and preserve the natural resources.

In India, 30- 40 percent of perishable food produces are rot at the production site or transit due to poor harvesting procedures, improper transportation and storage facilities. Lot of food grains are going waste after harvesting in different levels like farm and storage. Processing industries have to setup to process the fruits and vegetables for future consumption. A vigorous research and development has to be done on food packaging materials to protect from insects. We need large investments to improve the agriculture infrastructure in terms of processing, storage facilities, rural transportation and supply chain linkage to the consumers.

Livestock are important contributors to total food production and their part is equal to cereals. Around 55 billion chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, sheep and ducks are killed year for year, world wide. As per my perception, depend on animals for food is extremely strain and inefficient. Give up the meat and adopting vegetarian life style is best for human health and environment because eating meat makes the food chain longer from plants to humans. Moreover20 billions of ruminant animals are responsible for 18% of green house gas emissions. In future animal welfare, rights are going to be strong and may not be acceptable the hormone-laden feed used to make them grow faster and produce more.

The future agricultural revolution will be different from the earlier green revolution. I hope it’s the time for political policies, visionary leaders, biological, DNA solutions, software technologies, communication, renewable energies, heavy investments in infrastructure, credit facilities to farmers, education and training…..these are all collectively improve the way of farming in better fashion which leads to food security. We wish the Agriculture will reclaim its share in the economy by all these efforts.Food is prized, wasting food is not reasonable.
 
Please do comment: Yashwanthx@yahoo.com

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Friday, August 6, 2010

India's wealth in Switzerland


If the money is earned and stashed by unfair, illegal, corruptive practices and kept in secret to avoid the taxes is called BLACK MONEY. Circulation of unaccounted money is big a threat to economy and loss of revenue to the government. The generation of black money is against to basic objectives of economic planning for India, those are eradicate of poverty, removal of disparities of poor and rich, generation of employment and building the nation.Money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained money, but in actual scenario the definition has broadened by governments and international authorities.

The Prevention of Money-Laundering Act of India (PMLA) - enacted in 2002 and came into effect on 1 July 2005 which prevents money laundering and the parallel economy. According to this act, Reserve bank of India has given the guidelines on the cash transactions, deposit tracking, reporting, operation and maintenance of the records to the all financial institutions and non banking companies, I.e KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER (KYC).However the domestic black money is turning around in our economy and it is productive up to some extent. But we need to think about the money which was stashed in foreign banks are not useful to India. Some of the estimates are stating that a $1500 billions (about 70 lakhs Crores) of Indian unaccounted money is lying in Swiss and other foreign banks. This is the highest amount accumulated outside any country, from among the countries of the world. If that money brings back to India, every family in our country would get nearly Rs. 2.5 Lakhs, the national debt will be cleared and people would get a tax- free budget for 30 years.

Just for your information that Hinduja Brothers (Bofors guys) started a Swiss regulated bank (http://www.hindujabank.com/) in 1994 and this is the only Swiss bank which is owned by Indians. We can easily figure it out that all unauthorized money could be belongs to some of the leading politicians, top industrialists, celebrities, lobbyists and underworld mafia. Recently Swiss government has liberated their banking policies due to international demands and last year UBS bank revealed 4450 secret accounts details to US Government. Still the Indian government has not initiated the process to get the Indian Individuals accounts’ details though India is the member of Financial Action Task Force (FATA) which combats on money laundering and terrorist financing. Being a FATA member, Indian can get the real-time information on money laundering from member countries and pressurize the other countries on stashed Indian money by diplomatic approach. One important thing is that all the account holders’ information (Names and whereabouts) may not be genuine because they are not fools to hold such a huge amount on their real names which can be traced back to them. The government should probe into this unaccounted money and all deposits which are not claimed by any individual must be nationalized. More information on the same, please read Mr.LK Advani’s blog: blog.lkadvani.in

keep attention on this righteous cause and share your innovative ideas: Yashwanthx@yahoo.com

Friday, July 23, 2010

FDI in Retail industry- Farmers' perspective


The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion DIPP http://www.dipp.nic.in/ has come up with a discussion paper www.dipp.nic.in/DiscussionPapers/DP_FDI_Multi-BrandRetailTrading_06July2010.pdf which invites public opinion by July 31, 2010 and the subject is to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. This paper is favoring Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retailing (Multiple brands in multiple products) sector which would allow the global giants to directly set up outlets in the country. Multi-brand global retail giants like the Wal-Mart, Shop rite, Metro, Carrefour and Tesco may soon enter into Indian retail markets if this bill gets approved. However, the expansion of supermarkets in developing countries is expected.

In India, growing middle class with changing consumption patterns are ideal for supermarkets to prosper. The total size of Indian retail sector, including organized and unorganized sector is $300 billion, where currently the organized sector accounts for 4% only but near future the supermarket retail chains are going to play major role in agro-food sector in India. The supermarkets concerns are stable, year around supply with high quality and competitive prices. Supplying to large chain supermarkets gives both potential and large opportunities to our Indian farmers. The biggest challenge is to follow the strict guidelines by the retail groups in terms of quality and safety standards since most of our farmers usually deliver their goods to open markets or to local wholesalers. Mainly Indian farmers are marginal and small who are having average farm size of 3.3 acres, lack of infrastructure and poor post harvesting practices.

In India 40% of harvests are lost in storage and transportation. We are the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables but our country is loosing Rs.1 trillion per annum, (estimated 50% of produce) going waste due to lake of storage facilities and difficult to link to far-away markets. We need large investments to improve our agriculture infrastructure in terms of seed supply, agrichemicals, processing, machinery, storage facilities, rural transportation and supply chain linkage to support the current retail trends. This could be achieved through private investors preferably by organized retailers whether domestic or Global. If it truly improves the farmer’s income, agriculture growth and food security, there is no need to be concerned about FDI or domestic.

My recommendation on FDI- Retail in farmers’ perspective.

1. First and foremost... the multinational retailer’s trade practices should not dampen the spirit of Indian farmers and consumers. FDI – Retail should be a process of integrating Indian economy to the global economy as well as farmers can be integrated into the world class retail market not on the mercy or control of global retail giants.

2. Retailing sector needs to be and Industry status because retail sector is the second largest employer after agriculture and generating 10 percent of GDP and 8 percent of the employment. Lot of rural youth and mediocre educational qualified people are employed in this sector.

3. Governments make sure that farmers have to receive the remunerative price should be between 60% - 70% (based on product category) of the price paid by the consumer.

4. International retailers should be mandated to work with farmers to improve yields by enabling them provide quality inputs, best farm technologies, timely credit and remunerative prices for their produces.

5. Government needs to identify the trends and ways of supporting farmers to meet the needs of modern supply chains and marketing systems to enable with the supermarket sector.

6. Government should ensure that the agro produces should be procured from the local producers and local people must be given priority in employment opportunities in processing and supply chain.

I submited this information to Indian Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion and if you have any ideas please share with me . YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Farm fields are war fields @ andhrapradesh,Inc.gov



రైతులకు భూమి  ఉండడం నేరమా? రైతులు భూమిని దున్నడం చట్ట వ్యతిరేకమా? మరెందుకు.. జూలై 14 , 2010 న శ్రీకాకుళం జిల్లాలోని  సోంపేట రుధిర క్షేత్రంగా మారింది?  3000 మంది పోలీసులు మరియు 200 మంది ప్రవేట్ సైన్యం అందరు కలసి పచ్చని పంటచేల పైకి, కష్టం చేసుకొని కల్మషం తెలియని కర్షకులపైకి, బడుగు జీవుల పైకి వేటకు వెళ్లి...పది మందికి అన్నం పెట్టె రైతులను ఎందుకు కాల్చి చంపాలి. ఆకుపచ్చని పంట భూములను బూడిద చేయబోతున్న థర్మల్ విద్యుత్ ప్రాజెక్టులకు వ్యతిరేకంగా న్యాయబద్దంగా  ఉద్యమం చేస్తున్న వారిపై ఆటవికంగా బుల్లెట్లు కురిపించడం ఎంతవరకు సమంజసం. ఆందోళన కారులు శాంతియుతంగా  పోలీసులకు చేతులెత్తి మొక్కారు, కొంతమంది మహిళలు ప్లాంటు వద్దంటూ పోలీసుల పాదాలను తాకి వేడుకున్నారు, ప్రజల వ్యతిరేకతను అర్థం చేసుకోలేని పోలీసులు అసహనంతో నిర్ధాక్షిణ్యంగా కాల్పులు జరిపి పేద రైతుల ప్రాణాలను బలి తీసుకున్నారు. సున్నితమైన సమస్యలను బలప్రయోగంతో పరిష్కరించాలనుకొనే ఈ  చర్య, ప్రభుత్వ  వైఫల్యం కాదా?

ప్రకృతి సంపదను, గ్రామాలను.. కంపెనీలకు అమ్మేసి , వాటిలో విద్యుత్ ప్రాజెక్టులు, విమానాశ్రయాలు, సెజ్ లను చూపించి, అభివృద్ధి అని నమ్మించి ప్రజలను బిక్షగాండ్లను చేయడమెందుకు. ఈ విద్యుత్ ప్రాజెక్టుల వలన మన ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్ విద్యుత్ దీపాల కాంతితో, నిరంతరం నడిచే పరిశ్రమలతో వెలిగిపోతుందనుకొంటే అది అమాయకత్వమే అవుతుంది. ఇవన్ని వాణిజ్య ప్రాతిపదిక మీద ఏర్పాటుకాబోతున్న ప్రాజెక్టులే కాని ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్ ప్రజలకు తప్పనిసరిగా విద్యుత్ సరఫరా చెయ్యాలనే నిభంధన అంటూ ఏమి లేదు. మన రాష్ట్రం చిమ్మ చీకట్లో మగ్గిపోతున్నా ఈ విద్యుత్ ఉత్పత్తి చేసే కంపెనీలు తమకు తోచిన విధంగా ఎక్కువ ధరకు ఇతర రాష్ట్రాలకు, సంస్థలకు అమ్ముకునే అవకాశం ఉంది . మరి అటువంటప్పుడు శ్రీకాకుళం జిల్లాలోని  గ్రామాల ప్రజలు తమ వ్యవసాయ  భూములను, బ్రతుకులను  ఎందుకు త్యాగం చెయ్యాలి మరి ఎవరి జీవితాలలొనూ  వెలుగులు నింపని ఈ ప్రాజెక్టులకోసం.

శ్రీకాకుళం జిల్లాలో సోంపేట మండలం లోని 24   గ్రామాలలో  లక్ష ఎకరాలలో వ్యవసాయం  మరియు వ్యవసాయ అనుభంద వృత్తులపై  ప్రజలు ఆధారపడి  ఉన్నారు. అలాగే అక్కడున్న జల వనరులపై ఆధారపడి జీవిస్తున్న మత్స్యకారులు కూడా ఉన్నారు. వీరికి సంబందించిన భూములను ప్రభుత్వం బలవంతంగా లాక్కొని ప్రవేట్ కంపెనీలకు ప్రాజెక్టుల కోసం కేటాయిస్తే, జీవనోపాధి కోల్పోతామన్న భయంతో సహజంగానే వ్యతిరేకత వస్తుంది. అంతే కాకుండా ఈ విద్యుత్ ప్రాజెక్టులకు అవసరమైన నీరు చుట్టుపక్కల ఉన్న చెరువులు, సరస్సుల నుండి పెద్ద మొత్తంలో వాడుకోవడం వలన తాగడానికి , సాగు చేయడానికి  నీరు కొరత ఏర్పడుతుందని స్థానికులలో భయం ఉంది.  థర్మల్ విద్యుత్ ప్రాజెక్టులకు వాడే బొగ్గు నుండి కొన్ని కోట్ల టన్నుల బూడిద (carbon emissions) వచ్చి పర్యావరణానికి, వ్యవసాయ భూములకు, ప్రజల ఆరోగ్యాలకు ప్రమాదం కలిగే అవకాసం ఉంది. ఇన్ని భయాందోళనలు  ప్రజలలో ఉన్నందున, అన్ని వర్గాల ప్రజలు పెద్ద ఎత్తున ఉద్యమం చేపట్టారు సుమారు 230  రోజుల నుండి శాంతియుతంగా రిలే నిరాహారదీక్షలు చేస్తున్నారు.

బారత దేశం అభివృద్ధి చెందాలంటే తప్పనిసరిగా పెద్దఎత్తున పరిశ్రమలు స్థాపించాల్సిందే, మౌళిక సదుపాయాలు మెరుగుపర్చుకోవాల్సిందే కాని ఆహారభద్రత కల్పించే భారతీయ రైతుల, ఇతర అనుభంధ వృత్తుల ప్రజల జీవనోపాది కోల్పోయే విధంగా మాత్రం కాదు. ప్రాజెక్టులు కాని, SEZ లు కాని నిర్మించాలుచుకున్నపుడు, వ్యవసాయానికి పనికిరాని భూములను ఎంచుకోవచ్చు, ఒకవేళ తప్పనిసరిగా వ్యవసాయ భూములు అవసరం అయినప్పుడు తగిన పారితోషికం ఇవ్వటం ద్వారనో , భూమికి బదులుగా మరొక భూమిని సమకూర్చటం ద్వారానో నిరాశ్రయులు అయినవారిని ఆదుకోవచ్చు, ప్రాజెక్టుల ఉపయోగాన్ని  వివరించి ,ప్రజల అపోహలు తొలగించి, ఉద్రిక్తత నివారించే చర్యలు చేపట్టవచ్చు. అలాకాకుండా ఇటువంటి సున్నితమైన సమస్యలను బలప్రయోగం ద్వార పరిష్కరించాలనుకొంటే " వ్యవసాయ భూములన్ని ... యుద్ధ భూములుగా" మారగలవు.
మీ కామెంట్సు: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com
Pic Courtesy: Eenadu News

Friday, July 2, 2010

Is it true love an obsolete?

I want to take brake from my routine farmer’s and social issues, and like to write on True Love. What is the meaning of true love? Historically, we used to believe the concept of true love is from poets and author’s imaginative writings which are Laila- Majnu, Saleem –Anarkali, Devadas- Parvathi and Radha – Krishna…. Let us praise and worship their love. Asper my strong understanding the TRUE LOVE is a sense of sharing intimacies and feelings with some one who adores you. When I was in adolescence….I read somewhere which is written by anonymous in Telugu “ప్రేమంటే తెలియకపోవడం కంటే, ప్రేమించి, విఫలమై, విలపింప మేలురా” “It’s better to make love and fail than never experience the essence of the love”. One more musing by anonymous says that “Most of the love stories end with marriage but some of the enduring ones start with it”. Some one says that Love needs sacrifices... still, I am confused about this and what it really scarifies means. But, Love takes us such a magnificent and amazing state of mind.

From past most recent years, the True love has transformed into Modern love like a crash course of action. If you think about the modern trend of love... It’s very interesting and you will be surprised to sense the human relations became career and deal based relations. I heard that one of the girls rejected the love proposed by the boy who is software testers since the girl is looking for software developers. May be she believe that developers may get handsome package than testers so that their life goes smooth. Some of the boys also same set of mind that they would like to marry the girls who are graduated in most gainful technologies according to current market trends. I used to have funny thoughts about the future relations of wife and husband, if they evaluate their abilities one to another in every year and if they feel lucrative to both of them … they may continue to live together. If anybody has inefficient capabilities, we never know, they may separate in consecutive year. I am not blaming the individuals, but the market situations and irresistible career conscious drag us to these states of affairs.

According to present market trends, LOVE is the best marketing and profitable concept. I am surprised to read that the total US Market retails sales for the event of Valentines Day is $14.7 billions in 2010. You can imagine how big the total world market on behalf of particular day. As per marketing and financial experts, Love is the best unique selling proposition. You can see in the media, lot of advertisements used to present their ideas for selling goods and services by conceptualizing the LOVE. For Example... Chocolates, under wares, apparels, body sprays, diamond ornaments, cars, luxury goods and many more. I would like to make surprise you that the online dating service market in US is $2.1 billions per year and the top four providers are, Match.com, chemistry.com, perfectmatch.com, eharmony.com. They made the Concept of love is very simple and easy to find your soul mate. It’s just Ready to have life a partner like Ready to Eat foods. 

Love becomes a commodity which is profitable for business organizations, and media , they are exploiting the concept of Love by different commercial formats. Some of the individuals are misguided by the media (Movies) in the passion of love and involving in criminal activities like demanding, threatening and forcibly trying to get into their way of love. I used to read lot of instances in India i.e. attacks on girls by acids and weapons. Demanding Love is completely unethical. I would like to think that love is most sacred forever, but these modern trends of transformation in LOVE make me sad. Is it true love an obsolete? ప్రస్తుతం, "స్వచ్చమైన ప్రేమ" వాడుకలో లేదేమో?
Personal Note: Believe me….. The communication of our first message of love to our beloved ones is the toughest task in the universe. OH MY GOD, that makes you crazy… feel it.
Comments: YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Friday, June 18, 2010

Bhopal gas leak disaster is a lesson

భోపాల్ యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్ గ్యాస్ లీక్ దుర్ఘటనపై ఆక్రోశంతో నినదిస్తున్న  ఆ భాధితురాలు  ఆవేదనకు భారత ప్రభుత్వం కాని భారతీయ న్యాయవ్యవస్థ  కాని పూర్తి పరిష్కారం చూపలేక పొయింది. కసభ్ ఉరిశిక్ష విషయమై, సామాన్యునికి న్యాయవ్యవస్థపై నమ్మకం కల్పించాలంటూ  ప్రగల్భాలు పలికిన మన న్యాయవ్యవస్థ, అతి  ఘోరమైన పారిశ్రామిక విపత్తు భోపాల్ గ్యాస్ దుర్ఘటనపై 26 ఏళ్ళ సుదీర్గ వాదోపవాదాల అనంతరం జూన్ 7 న తన 95 పేజీల తీర్పులో దోషులకు కేవలం 2  సంవస్తరాల జైలు శిక్ష ను మరియు కొద్దిమొత్తంలో జరిమానా (2,123 U.S. dollars) విధిస్తూ తీర్పు ఇచ్చింది. ఆ తర్వాత వెంటనే దోషులకు బెయిలు కూడా మంజూరు చేసింది. దోషులు వృద్ధులయ్యారు….. వీరిని కఠినంగా శిక్షించలేం అంటూ న్యాయస్థానం సానుభూతి ప్రదర్శించింది. పైగా ఈ తీర్పులో ఘోరానికి భాధ్యులైన అప్పటి యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్ CEO ఆండెర్సన్ పేరు ప్రస్తావిన్చకపోవటం సిగ్గుచేటుగా అనిపిస్తుంది. ఈ తీర్పు ద్వారా సగటు భారతీయునికి  తన న్యాయ వ్యవస్థ పై, ప్రభుత్వ పనితీరుపై అపనమ్మకం ఏర్పడింది.

1984 డిసెంబర్ 3 న  యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్ ఫాక్టరీ భధ్రతా ప్రమాణాల లోపం వలన  మిథయిల్  ఐసోసయనట్ విషవాయువు  లీక్ అయి  దాదాపు 20 వేల మంది మృతి చెందగా, 5 లక్షల మంది తీవ్ర అనారోగ్యంపాలయ్యారు, మరియు ముందు తరాల వారు కూడా కొన్ని రకాల ఆరోగ్య సమస్యలతో భాధ పడుతున్నారు. 1985 ఫిబ్రవరి లో అప్పటి యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్ చైర్మన్ వారెన్ అండర్సన్ ను అరెస్టు చేసి,అతను అమెరికా వెళ్లి తిరిగి భారతదేశానికి వస్తానంటూ ఇచ్చిన హామీతో బెయిలుపై విడుదల చేసారు. ఆ తర్వాత భారత ప్రభుత్వం, 330  కోట్ల డాలర్ల నష్ట పరిహారం చెల్లించాలంటూ అమెరికా కోర్టులో కేసు దాఖలు చేస్తే, అమెరికా కోర్టు ఆ కేసులన్నింటిని మీరే పరిష్కరించుకోవాలంటూ భారత దేశానికీ బదలాయించింది. అమెరికా కోర్టు కాదన్నపుడు, ఐక్యరాజ్యసమితి  పరిధిలోని  అంతర్జాతీయ న్యాయస్థానం దృష్టికి తీసుకు వెళ్లకపోవడం మన ప్రభుత్వము మరియు న్యాయవ్యవస్థల వైఫల్యంగా చెప్పవచ్చు. 1989  లో కోర్టు వెలుపల ఒప్పందం క్రింద యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్, 470  మిలియన్ల డాలర్లు  అంటే సుమారు 1700 కోట్ల రూపాయలు  భారత ప్రభుత్వానికి చెల్లించింది. 330 కోట్ల డాలర్ల భారత ప్రభుత్వ నష్ట పరిహార అభ్యర్ధనను, యూనియన్ కార్బైడ్ 47 కోట్ల డాలర్లు మాత్రమే చెల్లించడంలో మన ప్రభుత్వం బేరసారాలు సాగించడంలో విఫలమైనదని తెలుస్తుంది. ఎప్పుడో 1989 లోనే 1700 కోట్ల రూపాయలు ప్రభుత్వానికి లభిస్తే …… 2004 జూలై 19 న సుప్రీం కోర్టు ప్రభుత్వానికి  చీవాట్లు పెట్టేదాకా భాధితులకు నష్ట పరిహారం సక్రమంగా  చెల్లించలేదంటే మన ప్రభుత్వం ఎంత ఉదాసినతతో వ్యవహరించిందో వేరుగా చెప్పనవసరం లేదు. ఇప్పటికి నష్టపరిహారం అందని భాధితులు ఉన్నారన్నది వాస్తవం.



ఇటీవల  అమెరికా గల్ఫ్ అఫ్ మెక్సికోలో జరుగుతున్న BP oil-spill  పరిష్కారం విషయంలో.. BP   కంపెనీకి మరియు అమెరికా ప్రభుత్వానికి మధ్య జరిగిన మొదటి పరిష్కార ఒప్పందంలో (జూన్ 16, 2010), BP Oil కంపెనీ 20  బిలియన్ల డాలర్లు  మొత్తం చెల్లింపుకు అంగీకారం తెలిపింది. ఆదే అమెరికాతో భారత ప్రభుత్వం చేసుకున్న పౌర వినియోగ అణు ఒప్పందం(2005)  ప్రకారం, మన దేశంలో స్థాపించబోయే అమెరికా అణు విద్యుత్ సంస్థలలో ఏదైనా ప్రమాదం సంభవిస్తే నష్ట పరిహారం 500  కోట్ల రూపాయలు మించి చెల్లించబోమని పరిమితులతో కూడిన షరతులు విధించింది. అందుకు అంగీకరించిన మన ప్రభుత్వం పార్లమెంటులో బిల్లు ప్రవేశపెట్టింది.(బిల్లు పాస్ కాలేదు - ఇది చాలా చిన్నమొత్తం అయినందున, ప్రతిపక్షాలు అంగీకారం తెలుపలేదు). ఎంతో గొప్ప అయినటువంటి Oxford University లో చదువుకున్న, ఎంతో విజ్ఞానం, వికాసం ఉన్న మన ప్రధానమంత్రి గారు బహుళ జాతి సంస్థల ప్రయోజనాల పరిరక్షణ కోసం భారత దేశం ప్రజల ప్రాణాలను 500 కోట్ల రూపాయలకు పరిమితి విధించి పణంగా పెట్టదల్చుకున్నారు. మరి ఈ ప్రభుత్వాధినేతలు,మన ప్రజల ప్రాణాలను...భారత దేశ సార్వభౌమత్వాన్నిఏ విధంగా కాపాడుతారు.


అందుకే మనలను మనం చక్కదిద్దుకోవాలి, మన న్యాయవ్యవస్థలోను, మన ప్రభుత్వ పనితీరులోను సంస్కరణలు,సవరణలు జరగాల్సిన అవసరం ఉంది. ప్రపంచీకరణ నేపధ్యంలో, బహుళజాతి సంస్థలతో జరిగే ఒప్పందాలలో ప్రజల భద్రతను, పర్యావరణాన్ని ప్రధానఅంశంగా చేర్చాలి. ఆర్ధిక సరళీకృత విధానాల వలన ధనిక దేశాలు, అభివృద్ధి చెందుతున్న దేశాలపై అధికారం చెలాయించే  అవకాశం ఉన్నందున.. మన దేశ ఆత్మ గౌరవాన్ని , సార్వభౌమత్వాన్ని తాకట్టు పెట్టే విధంగా ఉండకూడదు. మన భారత దేశ పరిశ్రమల భధ్రత కోసం అత్యున్నత ప్రమాణాలతో పటిష్టమైన చట్టం రూపొందించు కోవలసిన అవసరం ఉంది . ఇకపై ఎటువంటి విపత్తులు జరుగకుండా ఉండడానికి భోపాల్ దుర్ఘటన మనకు ఒక గుణపాఠం కావాలి.

మీ కామెంట్సు: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

Friday, June 11, 2010

They robbed our nation not only Kohinoor

The precious stone which was stolen by British is “Kohinoor” in Persian meaning - “Mountain of Light”. It is a 105 carat diamond that was once the largest known diamond in the world. It was found more than 500 years ago in Guntur District in Andhra Pradesh. It has traded hands by various Hindu, Mughal, Sikh, British rulers and finally in the crown of British Queen. As everybody knows that the Kohinoor diamond was taken away from India by the British rulers. Recently our Indian government (Archaeological Survey of India) requested the United Kingdom to return back. The UK government has denied as per their British Museum Act 1963. I have question … Is there any article of law which prevents to recover the “stolen” property?

Some people are chanting and praising the deeds of the British rule that contributed to India for modernization in the form of railways and transportation canals. I don’t believe in that. They build the internal infrastructure to make feasible for their trade and mercantile. They initiated the administration system for the revenue generation not for public governance. They introduced the Macaulay’s education system which was forcibly imposing English language in education since they wish to communicate in English not to encourage the Indians to get knowledge and wisdom. Finally they did nothing except robbing. There is no comparison of British rulers with our native Indian emperors like Akber, Aurungzib, ShahJehan, Sivaji and Ashoka. They were most progressive, magnificent and superior emperors in the world and their reign everything flourished. But the British came in to the power by taking the advantage of disputes among the Indian kings.

We lost so many things…. more than this precious diamond. The British rulers opened the fire in Jallianwala bagh on innocent, peaceful, unarmed 2000 Indian patriots who were martyred in non –violent struggle against British tyranny. We should demand the United Kingdom for the official confession against the Jallianwala bagh massacre on 13th April, 1919. Who will compensate that monstrous genocide? British rulers ignored the Indian industrial development when the western countries are growing with an abundant of industrial revolution. They were not setup the plants and simply trading the consumer goods by imports. How can we reimburse the dearth of the industrial growth gap? The British delivered us very bad feudal rules from Europe and they haven’t formed a good political structure for India. While leaving the country, they just transferred the power to an Indian elite family and their buddies who remain loyal to the British. The same family has been enjoying power from past decades and generation after generation.

The British rule on India has done more harm than good to India. They enslaved and robbed our human resources, natural resources and they ruined our culture and heritage. At this point of time, Archaeological Survey efforts have gone as a futile exercise. The Archaeological Survey of India is planning to launch an international campaign to get the Kohinoor back. Let us support that. I have curiosity….. Is she (Queen of British) doesn’t feel embarrassment to fully clad with crown which is embedded with Stolen Diamond?
Please do comment: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

Friday, May 7, 2010

BELOW STARVATION LINE

India is ranked 65th among 84 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index by the International Food Policy Research institute. Recently, three months ago I read about famine conditions are existed in Eastern part of India and starvation deaths also have reported. We have highest rate (46%) of malnutrition and underweight children, high maternal mortality and high malnutrition women among the world. The Government of India initiated to implement National Food Security Act (NFSA). The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) was set up by the central government to outline the framework of this act. The National Food Security Act was formulated that each BPL (Below Poverty Line) family would get 25 kg of rice or wheat per month at Rs.3 a kg and the budget estimate will be Rs. 43,000 crores. But the Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Security ordered that the government should provide 35 kg of food grain to the poor families. UPA Chairperson Ms. Sonia Gandhi also suggested the government to work out on 35 kgs of food grain for BPL families.

Now the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) are exercising the Mechanism with planning commission to redefine THE POOR FAMILIES (BPL).Planning commission is taking the consideration of various estimates. Suresh Tendulkar committee 2009 (National Development Council), which projects the poverty at total 37.2 percent and the estimate of 41.8% rural and 27.5% urban families (32 crores people and 8.7 crores people).The Tendulkar committee has set the criteria based on per capita consumption expenditure for defining the poor in rural India at Rs. 446 per month and for the poor in urban India at Rs 580 per month. The Rural Development Ministry's committee chaired by N C Saxena has estimated that 50% of Indian families are below poverty line. Arjun Sengupta committee by National Commission on Enterprise in Unorganized Sector claimed that 77 per cent of the population (or 836 million people) were able to spend not more than Rs 20 a day (or roughly 48 US cents).

Our Indian media is prompting that Bull is rising in share market and sensex is crossing the screen limits…then why 50% Indian families are below poverty line. The Forbes magazine listed the 52 richest Indian people among the world. Sure we are proud of that…then what about the embarrassment situation of 77% Indian population who are unable to meet the expenditure of Rs.20 per day. In India, two powerful brothers who have given the gifts (Corporate Jet – 300 crores, Super Luxury Yacht-400crores) to their lovely wives on their birthdays. That’s great …but in other outlook of India, we are pity and heart wrenching about the poor Indian farmers who sold their wives to pay their farm loans [click CNN.com]. In USA a cow meet the expenditure of $2 per day, our committees are stating that more than 50% of our citizens are unable to spend not even .45 cents per day.... I can't compare my beloved citizens. Conclusion is that we are not in below poverty line we are in BELOW STARVATION LINE .anyhow, Food security is the basic welfare of the state and we wish no one should die with hunger.
Please do comment and share with your friends and colleagues. YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

నా దేశ దారిద్ర్యం ఇలా ఉంటే, ఏమని పొగడను ఆ తల్లి భూమి భారతిని, అందుకే కొంచెం కలతతో, కొంచెం దిగులుతో అడుగుతున్నాను.. ఓ! భారతమాత నీ నిండు గౌరవము నీవే నిలుపుకో , ఓ! భారత విధాత.... నా దేశానికీ కొంత భాగ్యాన్ని ప్రసాదించు.

Friday, April 23, 2010

IPL: Game/Business/Entertainment/Money speculation

Cricket is an imported, historic game of India. Most of the Indians love cricket treating that an unofficial National Game which is officially Hockey. In olden days it was started with 5days test matches, changed to One day matches and now transformed to 20/20 pattern. Board of control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the regulator of Cricket in India, Each state level association secretaries are the members and they will elect the BCCI board. BCCI started Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008 with 20/20 model game with 8 teams (Franchises) which contains the players of different countries.IPL tournaments are giving opportunity to new players that’s a good sign. As everybody knows that change is constant, eventually the game pattern changed according to the trend and time.One day it may go further as 15/15 or 10/10 with innovative gamming format, it’s a game… we never know.

Presently, the franchises are owned by Business conglomerates and Bollywood Beauties. Some of the businessmen used to invest their money in Horse races and Car races, Vijay mallya (UB Group) and Venkatarami reddy (Deccan Chronicle) are some of them. They used to invest on horses and races, they realized with IPL business model as better proposition and deicide to invest on Cricket players rather than horses. The players will be bid by the Franchise owners in auctions with huge amounts to get those favorite players in their teams. The global Economic depression has no impact on IPL, in terms of Auctions to bid the players and the foreign investments in the Franchises. Millions of revenue generate among the Franchises, Media companies, apparel companies and Food beverages companies in this IPL series. The Players are very much interested to play in these leagues instead of International Cricket since the international tournament’s pay package is less comparatively with IPL. They will get handsome package in short span of time, this is all business.

IPL Series is an India’s favorite entertainment which goes 45 days, sometimes it may go further couple of days. It’s like big carnival..the stadium is filled with bollywood glamour, Businessmen and celebrities. The broadcasting rights have given to Media giants like Sony's Set Max and WSG, people will enjoy on TVs and internet. IPL matches are affecting to some of the TV shows and movies in terms viewership and collections. Click for Video-Telugu Actor Shivaji agonizes on IPL.People are enjoying the IPL as an entertainment event value than Sporting event. The exotic cheerleaders are attracting the audience like sexy MTV songs or item girl songs in the Indian Movies. click for Entertainment link.

BCCI is having tax exemption since that is a charitable entity which promotes the cricket game in India. This is a great advantage to the businessmen who can route their black money in to IPL. Lot of foreign investors also funding into IPL Franchises, it could be money laundering. Why BCCI is getting tax relief even its involving in commercial activities through IPL from 2008? Betting on IPL matches also is a big business for bookies that have network nationally and internationally. You can get so many websites to gamble on IPL matches online. Surprised to read the article in a District tabloid says that in prakasam Dist of AP, the betting amounts were crossed Rs.20 Lakhs per day in IPL season.

Indian politicians, Media and Corporates are monopolizing the cricket game for their individual benefits. We have other national games and sports too which inspire the National integration, discipline, human values and sportsmanship. We should encourage those sports and rural games as well as cricket. If we imagine about USA….they have NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR and so on… they are not emphasizing only one single game or sport. At Once upon a time India was the super star in Hockey, now it is diminished form the limelight. Why we don’t have good ample number of players in other sport and games except cricketers? If we don’t want to see few more Pullela Gopichand, Karanam Malliswari, PT Usha and Koneru Hampi… then we shall Eat Cricket, Drink Cricket, and Sleep Cricket.

The duo Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi are inspiration to write this article. Please send comments to YashwanthX@yahoo.com

Friday, April 16, 2010

Operation People Hunt

ఛత్తీస్‌గఢ్ రాష్ట్రంలో దంతేవాడ జిల్లాలో ఏప్రిల్ 6వ తేదిన 76 మంది CRPF జవాన్లను మావోయిస్టులు హతమార్చడం మన అందరికి తెలిసిందే. భారతదేశ చరిత్రలో ఇంత దారుణమైన మారణకాండ జవాన్ల పై ఎన్నడు జరుగలేదు. ఈ దారుణాన్ని మనమంతా ఖండించాల్సిన విషయం, ఇది చాలా హేయమైన చర్య, ప్రజాస్వామ్యంలో హింసకు ఆమోదం లేదు. అయితే ఆ తర్వాత జరిగిన పరిణామాలని గమనిస్తే విస్తుపోక తప్పదు.

మొదటిది, కేంద్ర హోంశాఖ కార్యదర్శి G K పిళ్ళై తీవ్ర స్వరంతో " మా సత్తా ఏమిటో చూపిస్తాం" అంటూ ప్రతీకార ధోరణిలో మాట్లాడారు, దానిని చిదంబరం కూడా సమర్దించారు. (Please Refer Eenadu Archives)
ఒక బాధ్యతాయుతమైన ప్రభుత్వ అధికారి, విపత్కర పరిస్థితులలో statements ఇచ్చే ముందు ఒకటికి రెండు సార్లు సరిచూసుకోవాల్సి ఉంటుంది. వారు వాడిన ప్రతీకార భాష అగ్గికి ఆజ్యం పోసినట్లుందే తప్ప.... స్వాంతన కాని, ఆలోచనధోరణని మార్చే దిశగా లేదు. నిజం చెప్పాలంటే వారి మాటలు CRPF జవాన్లకు ధైర్యం కల్పించే విధం గాను, చనిపోయినవారి కుటుంబాలకు ఓదార్పుగాను, మావోయిస్టులను ప్రజలందరి ముందు దోషులుగా నిలబెట్టాలనే ప్రయత్నం జరగాలే తప్ప , ప్రతీకార భాష తో మావోయిస్టులను మరిన్ని దాడులకు ఉసిగొల్పే విధంగా, CRPF జవాన్లలో ప్రతీకారాన్ని రెచ్చగొట్టే విధంగా ఉండకూడదు.
రెండవది, చిదంబరం రాజీనామా నాటకం, దానిని ప్రధానమంత్రి ఆమోదించక పోవడం. 76 మంది జవాన్ల మరణానికి తానే భాద్యుడంటూ... గొప్ప మానవత్వాన్ని, నైతిక భాద్యతను చాటుకునే ప్రయత్నాన్నిరాజీనామా ద్వారా చేసారు. మరి డిసెంబర్ 2009 నెలలో ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్ రాష్ట్ర విభజన విషయమై... అస్పష్టమైన, అర్ధం చేసుకోవటానికి కష్టమైన, ద్వందర్దాలు కలిగిన statements ఇవ్వడం ద్వారా ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్ లో 200 మందికి పైగా మరణాలకు ( ప్రత్యేక, ఉమ్మడి రాష్ట్రంకోసం ఆత్మహత్యలు) కారణమైన ఈ చిదంబరానికి అప్పుడెందుకు ఈ రాజీనామాలు , ఈ నైతిక భాద్యతలు గుర్తుకు రాలేదో ఆ చిదంబర రహస్యాన్ని ..చిదంబరం గారే చెప్పాలి.


అయితే చిదంబరం, 2003 వరకు Vedanta resources (British based multinational)  కంపెనీ లో డైరెక్టర్ గాను, ఆ కంపెనీ న్యాయవాది గాను పనిచేసిన విషయం ప్రజలందరికి తెలిసిందే Chidambaram -Wikipedia. ఛత్తీస్గఢ్ లోను, ఒరిస్సాలోను విస్తారమైన అటవీప్రాంతంలోగల అపారమైన ఖనిజ సంపదను అతి పెద్ద కార్పోరేట్ సంస్థలైన TATA , ESSAR , Vedanta resources లకు కేటాయించడం, దానివలన కొంతమంది ఆదివాసిలు నిరాశ్రయులుగా మారడం, వారికి మావోయిస్టులు మద్దతు తెలియజేయడం.. వాటి పరిణామాలు. కార్పోరేట్ సంస్థలను పరిరక్షించే నిమిత్తం, ప్రభుత్వం శాంతిభద్రత మరియు తీవ్రవాద నిర్మూలన సాకుతో మావోయిస్టుల పై అప్రకటిత యుద్ధం (Operation Green Hunt) ప్రారంబించడం ... ఆ తర్వాత ఈ మారణహోమం దాని పర్యవసానమే. మావోయిస్టులు మాత్రం తాము ఎప్పటికైనా ఢిల్లీ పీఠాన్ని అధిష్టించి సామ్యవాద సమసమాజ సామ్రజ్యాన్ని స్తాపించాలనే భ్రమతో… హింసాత్మక చర్యల ద్వారా ప్రజలను ఆకట్టుకొనే ప్రయత్నం చేస్తూ ప్రజలను భయబ్రాంతులకు గురి చేస్తున్నారు. మావోయిస్టుల చర్యలతో ప్రజలు ఎప్పుడో విసిగిపోయారు, ఇంకా కొన్ని వర్గాల ప్రజలు ఆదరిస్తున్నారు అంటే... అది ప్రేమతో, అభిమానంతో మాత్రం కానే కాదు, కేవలం భయంతోనే.


ఒక విధంగా చెప్పాలంటే .. మనకు, పాకిస్తాన్ కు ఈ అంతర్యుద్ధ విషయంలో కొంచెం సారుప్యత కనిపిస్తుంది. పాకిస్తాన్ తీవ్రవాదం అణచివేత పేరుతో అమెరికాసేనల మద్దతుతో గిరిజనులపై పోరాటం చేస్తుంటే , మనము బహుళజాతి కంపెనీల సంరక్షణ కోసం శాంతిభద్రతల పేరుతో, అభివృద్ధి పేరుతో మావోయిస్టులపై , ఆదివాసిలపై యుద్ధం చేస్తున్నాము. అభివృద్ధి తో పాటు అన్ని వర్గాల ప్రజల సంక్షేమం కూడా ప్రభుత్వాల ప్రధాన కర్తవ్యం. ఏది ఏమైనప్పటికీ... ప్రభుత్వ విధానాల ద్వారా చనిపోతుంది మనుషులే కాని క్రూరమృగాలు కాదు, వారు CRPF జవాన్లు అయిన, ఇంఫార్మర్స్ నెపంతో గిరిజనులు అయిన, మావోయిస్టుల అయిన ...అందరు భారతీయులే కాని చొరబాటుదారులు కారు, పరజాతీయులు కారు. కేంద్ర హోంశాఖ మంత్రి చిదంబరం రాజీనామాకు ఉపక్రమించడం , హోంశాఖ కార్యదర్శి ప్రతీకారంతో రగిలిపోవడం లాంటి ఈ పరిస్థితులలో ప్రభుత్వం అందరికి ఆమోదయోగ్యమైన నిర్ణయం తీసుకుని ఈ సమస్య కు పరిష్కారం కనుక్కోగలదని ఆశిద్దాం.
మీ కామెంట్సు: YashwanthX@Yahoo.com

Friday, April 9, 2010

Agriculture Outsourcing

India is eminent for Software Outsourcing, China is well-known for computer hardware and domestic products outsourcing. Mexico is the global leader in auto parts outsourcing. USA is a giant for high-tech goods like Aircrafts, Automobiles, Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals. Japan is famous for Electronics. So... what about outsourcing of agriculture? Lot of countries are importing food and agro products from other countries to satisfy their population needs. Governments and corporations are buying farmland in other countries to grow their own food to protect their food security. We can call it as outsourcing of agriculture. These countries are outsourcing the farming for various reasons; most of them are lack of natural resources and volatile climate conditions.

Take the instance of Middle East, they don’t have sufficient water resources to grow crops and taking care of the growing population. Saudi Arabia gives up the growing crops in the desert with exorbitant spending. They invested in Indonesia for 500,000 hectares of farmland and other animal production investments in abroad. United Arab Emirates has leased 375,000 hectares in northern Sudan, 325,000 hectares in Pakistan and 5,000 in Ethiopia. Kuwait arranged $546 million loan to Cambodia in exchange for a lease to a large area of rice lands. Qatar leased 100,000 hectares in the Philippines, Vietnam and Kenya. Some of the Asian countries also pursuing same deals, South Korean companies have arranged to lease 690,000 hectares in Sudan and Madagascar. China invested $800 millions in Mozambique agriculture. China bought a lot of farm land in Senegal for Sesame production. More than 300 Indian companies have invested around $4.0 billions in Ethiopia for Floriculture and agriculture. Lot of outsourcing investments in agriculture projects were made in Sub Saharan Africa and South East Asia.

Some of the Latin American countries are encouraging agriculture investments. Mercosul countries (Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil) are attracting the foreign investors with their land & investment policies and their abundance of natural resources. Many of US and Canadian Agribusiness corporations (Bunge Foods, Cargill, Unilever, and ADM) are cultivating and processing the food grains, soya, sugar and ethanol in South America.
We can assume that all these efforts are feeding the people, but one thing we can notice that the entire agriculture trade is going to the hands of the wealthy nations, retails giants and big food processing organizations. The developing and poor countries are unable to feed their people if the surplus food which will be produced will be shipped to abroad. So the investing countries or corporations shall take the consideration of local population food needs. Leasing and selling the land to foreign investors should be transparent and accountable, that revenue shall be used for the benefit of the local population.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Ultra Modern Zamindars

We fought more than 200 years with British for freedom of our land. Indo-Pakistani war and Indo china war were happened for Jammu Kashmir land dispute and Himalayan land dispute. So many agitations in India for separate land i.e. Telangana, Vidarbha, Mithilanchal, Saurashtra, Harit Pradesh, and Bundelkhand. Funny thing is… SATYAM (No related to land except software), such a big tech company collapsed due to greedy investments on land through MAYTAS and others. Matter of fact everybody loves land…. land is life, basis of all wealth and a factor of production. Now everybody’s passion is land because…the land appreciation value is very high comparatively with other savings like gold, fixed deposits, bonds, shares and securities. The land value is cherished more than 5 times in past ten years.

Before independence most of land was acquired by few land lords (Zamindars). Since independence, there has been voluntary and government initiated land reforms for distribution of land among the landless farmers. Jawaharlal Nehru initiated ceiling on lands to abolish landlord system. Land to tiller is the slogan of peasant’s movement in 1970s became very intense. Now the history repeating… present economic reforms are creating Ultra Modern Zamindars in the form of Industrialists. The land ceiling systems is applicable to agriculture lands only not for industrial lands, those limitations are advantages to the industrialist to acquire the land as much as they want. The governments are allotting thousands of hectares of land to big industrialists in the name of SEZ, IT industries, Airports, Seaports and other Projects. Reliance, Tata and Adani Group have got 4,830 hectare land from Gujarat state. GMR group (Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao) got 5500 acres of land for free to construct the Shamshabad Airport, but the Government share is very nominal. The Government of Andhra Pradesh allotted the land to Vanpic (Vaderevu – Nizampatnam Port& Industrial Corridor- Nimmagadda Prasad) around 10,000 acres. I can mention so many like 1300 acres to Jindal group (Savitri Jindal) near Visakhapatnam, 1000 acres to Vedanta Resources (Anil Agarwal) in Orissa and Tata and Essar 6500 acres of land in Chattisgarh.
I have a right to believe that Chief Ministers are functioning as Property dealers

In fact farmers need the land, because that is their livelihood, they care for the land. The recent economic reforms are intend to forcible acquisition of agriculture land in thousands of acres that belonged to small farmers in the name of industries, mining, dams and others projects. The economic liberalization programs are completely neglected the land distribution among the landless farmers. Indian farmers are very small and peasants who are holding an average farm land of lessthan 1 hectare (2.5 acres) and some of them do farming by taking lands on rent basis (Tenant farmers). Present economic reforms are promoting the privatization of natural resources, it cause to moving the farmers out of agriculture and some times may be lead to insurgency (Maoist in Chattisgarh, west Bengal, Orissa, and Jharkhand). We need mutually beneficial reforms which can restore the pride of agriculture and ensure the industrial growth. We must protect our 600 million farmers to make sure our food security and food self sufficiency which is our country’s priority
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