Real crisis today, when we refuse to accept the troubles faced by farm sector: Sainath
› The farm crisis is not just a crisis of water, electricity, land, but is a measure of the loss of humanity. P SAINATH, senior journalist
CHANDIGARH: The country is in the middle of an agrarian crisis as we have been silently watching the plight of millions of farmers worsening by the day for nearly 20 years, senior journalist and author P Sainath said on Monday.
Sainath, who was speaking on the first day of two-day ‘International Conference on Governance for the Margins’ (in context of South Asia) organised by the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC), said the government is preparing to get out of the procurement process.
“The real crisis is that we are not ready to accept that we are in the middle of an agrarian crisis,” he said.
Referring to Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget announcement of giving 1.5 times the input cost to farmers, he said, “The scheme is neither practical nor effective. The current crisis is not just a crisis of water, electricity, land but a measure of the loss of humanity.”
He pointed out that in the 1960s and 1970s, the struggle for justice included even those who were not suffering and the state played an umpire’s role but it is not even pretending to be one today.
Citing the Forbes magazine’s listing that says that the number of Indian billionaires has gone up from zero in 1992 to 101 in 2017, he said India has registered the highest rate of growth in terms of inequality in the world.
“While we grew in terms of number of billionaires, look at what happened to the rest of the country,” he said.
Later, he talked about disconnect between media and journalism at the Chandigarh Press Club.
‘GOVERNANCE IS MANAGEMENT OF DISSENT’
At IDC, Atul Sood from the economics department of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in his keynote address observed that governance is management of dissent and of crafting development discourse which facilitates status quo which has become unsustainable.
Quoting a World Bank report, he said even as the state was asked to strengthen its role as the facilitator for private enterprise.
He suggested that the indices that measure development have to change from ease of doing business to hunger, from private to public, from the development of skills to the quality of jobs available.
Earlier, IDC director Pramod Kumar said the crisis is not because our economy is not growing at a faster pace or that one-third of world’s poor are l iving in India but it is in the manner in which these crises are being resolved.
Prof Lakhwinder Singh of Punjabi University, Ankur Malhotra from Accenture and Mithlesh Jayas Mukherji, a researcher from Pondicherry, spoke on innovation for inclusive governance.
Prof Vijay Khare of the University of Pune and Prof Ronki Ram of Panjab University, Chandigarh, spoke on the role of the civil society and its interaction with governance.
Prof Kalinga Tudor Silva from Sri Lanka talked about ethnicity and nationalism as a framework for articulating insecurities of those at the margins.
Prof Mitsuya Dake from Japan argued for an international climate of peace as being conducive to constructive development and Prof Satoko C Nakane (also from Japan) talked about issues related to governance and child welfare in India.