Sunday, August 19, 2012

Read This Farmer

The humble Indian farmer has been in the NEWS for various reasons; ranging from his plight due to lack of rain affecting his crops, presence of flood due to excess and needless to say, suicides in outraging numbers due to his unrecoverable debts. The farmer has been subject to covering full pages with crisp photographs  along with his family in magazines and newspapers, which otherwise have nothing much to offer anyway and at times does achieve its pre-assumed target to gets us thinking deeply about their plight. Making us wonder where our conscience has gone. 

Watch the vegetables we buy today... they simply don't rot-thanks to the farmer who uses preservatives and knows how to inject them intrinsically into their skin. Look at all the fruits available in the stores, in excess too-thanks to the farmer who uses fertilizers and pesticides in plenty to boost the yield. Look how the produce from the farms shine-thanks to the farmer again for rubbing the skin of these chemically created yield further with wax to lure the buyers. Land, consumers, humans, ethics, sustainability-does the farmer care? Are his actions justifiable as much as the justice he cries to have been denied to him in the tabloids and ever-moving media cameras? Does he wonder, bother and care about the people who are affected by him as he asks shamelessly for people to help him out?  Is he as humane as he wants others to be? Does he think about how his actions affects the society as he constantly blames the society for his plight?

The once upon a time backbone of our country, today stands extended like an appendix-useless and causing us pain-unbothered. As we are force-fed these "bio wonders" of modern age, does the farmer or the country that promotes these care? As we have reduced ourselves into becoming test grounds for these seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, does the farmer who makes the choice to make the final decision to implement these which kill the land really care? As we consume these products and become lab rats and source out a major chunk of our hard earned and borrowed revenue for the hospital industry via paying the bills in counters where we shouldn't be and as families as we drown in deep debts, does the farmer really care about the avoidable-damage he causes? And the  farmer manages to have the nerve to ask, "Why no one cares?!" Isn't this an interesting paradoxical irony?! "Hey farmer, are you wondering still why no one cares about you? Let me ask you, why don't you care about others too?" All I can say for now is, "Get well soon farmer." And till then you cry, cry, cry... you make me cry too. 

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