Privatisation - paint it not with one stroke - part 2

Green Revolution- everything modern need not be good.

When I look at the above two words and remember what I studied about it in school, the words that come to my mind are; 'successful', 'modern agriculture', 'boon to India', 'modern farming'. Well as they say dont believe that everything you read by default is accurate. Last month as I was preparing for rural camp for adolescent students,I came to realize how far the Green Revolution was/is away from the above labels. The names of companies of Monsanto and Cargill have become a lot more familiar and I had to grudgingly add another chapter of how our servile homage to anything that resemble private company participation has resulted in destruction of lives of fellow Indians and their land which is their soul,sustenance and dignity.

During the camp in April, the school students were interacting with a few farmers in the Rohilla Palliwal village of the Chamoli District in Uttaranchal. The students asked the farmers whether they had heard about the Green Revolution/Hari Kranti and if they had whether they had employed the suggested techniques. The farmers responded by saying that they had heard about the Green Revolution and had even employed its methods, but they rejected it within a few years and switched back to their traditional farming methods. For the first two years the seeds, fertilizers that they bought from the comapnies resulted in an increased yield but later they saw that the soil was losing its fertility because of the new seeds and even the nearby fields which were not using the seeds were being affected. They wisely shifted back to the traditional methods and thus have regained their rich soil on which they can grow diverse crops.

During the 1980s large multinationals like Cargill, Monsanto started to dominate the agricultural scenarios of many countries including India. They promoted their hybrid genetically modified seeds as an option to obtain increased yield and pushed many governments to accept their products along with the support of international funding agencies. Now see what happens when you hand over something like farming to private multinationals.In traditional farming the famer can use the seeds that he/she has to grow the next year's crop but not so in corporate farming which operates on the principle of profit. The GM seeds has a terminator gene which disallows it to be used for next year's crop. This means that the poor farmer has to buy seeds from the company every year. And mind you these seeds are definitely not cheap, plus as we know corporate love to introduce specific value add services. So the fertilizers, pesticides that are compatible with the seeds are also available only with these companies. So the poor farmer has to take loans to buy the expensive seeds and fertilizers and since again the private financial institutions loath to give loans to such a seemingly high risk segment(doesnt matter if the Grameen Bank has made a mokery of this logic), he/she has to depend on the loan by the local money lenders which charge a shockingly high interest of 30%-40%. Isnt it shocking that the seeds and fertilizers for which the farmer takes on such a huge burden only leads to further poison in his soil and decreased fertility.The poison also spreads to nearby water sources and other plant species leading to several diseases for new born babies, children and animals.

Such challenges and increased debt from the private sponsored Green Revolution has led to the phenomenon that in the last 20 years India has seen such a huge spate of farmer suicides. The number of farmer suicides in the last 20 years is crazy and is happening for the first time in India. So be very cautious when you think of agribusinesses, when you want to make farming a commodity segment by giving it to private players because as you know that private multinationals like Cargill and Monsanto are very good in their work. It just so happens that its for their own profits and not for the farmers of any country.

To know more about Green Revolution, click on the below links
http://www.organicindia.com/green-revolution-killing-indian-farmers.php
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1451229