Agriculture distress is only one factor.
The other factors are too many to narrate!
A surprise of surprise is the latest move of certain courage on the part of the otherwise submissive bureaucracy to summon up courage, some 83 bureaucrats of high ranks, most of them ex-IAS officers, some really daring to write to the Prime Minister an open letter and ask the PM to get the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adithyanath to resign for having caused the killing of a policeman in Bulandshahr violence and riots over the alleged cow slaughter.
The letter doesn’t mince words, it calls the killing of a government servant as “the most dangerous turn taken in the direction of politics of hate”. It is really something, given the fear psychosis created by the turn of events in India under Mr.Modi. The bureaucrats, often seen as a bunch of cowards who always seek government patronage under one pretext or other and who get cushy jobs, assignments of one sort or other and choose to live, why hang on in the comforts of the Lyton bungalow zone. And for them to summon up courage to stand up for some principles is really a very welcome change of psychology.
It has been our consistent view that in India politics had degraded somewhat to a degree that all principles of decency and self-worth gone and anything can be done or justified to seek favours, not from the people in power, even otherwise, from those in some authority, even the part president, the Indian National Congress as one party that had been in power for long had developed a sort of India’s own version of a political oligarchy around the Congress establishment. In which dynastic politics to a culture of clinginess and we see the manifestation of many facets of our behaviour in public life. We talked to many senior leaders in Delhi and they all seem to give the impression of waiting for some job to fall in their lap.
Those who were once top bureaucrats had turned into politicians, as members of the Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha or even governors of states, why even the personal security guards had turned into governors!
And lo! You see the most undeserving one had become big shots thanks to the unwisdom of the party presidents and leaders who by just crouching under the chairs of these know-nothings had seen Indian politics descend to some low levels.
We saw these outcomes in the latest election campaigns, the incumber Prime Minister and the leader of Opposition, in this instance, Mr.Rahul Gandhi chose to speak in such abusive languages, vulgar words and unprintable fashion that Indian politics touched a new low, a new bad state of affairs.
One more critical observation we want to make at this point. Mr.Gandhi, soon after he won the three state elections, perhaps unavoidable in the heat and flurry of emotions has started to speak in a sort of revenge that he won’t let the PM sleep and so on in the days and months to come.
This is fine but it, this sort of empty rhetoric must end and a sense of substance in Congress alternatives must emerge, emerge rather too soon.
How long Mr.Gandhi can afford to carry on in this fashion?
Surely, the people too would soon become tired of such emptiness of politics.
In fact, there is every reason to suspect that the people too, the voters in the just concluded elections were clearly became disillusioned with the Prime Minister’s promise of the moon! He promised so much and many of his promises, the list is long and well-orchestrated by the PM’s own self-indulgent haranguing and the built-up accumulation of all these unfulfilled promises, combined with other contingent events and developments, the UP Chief Yogis’ own contributions in the Bulandshar’s violence and the killing of the policeman and others of the Yogi’s own version of redemption for India had led to the total rout of the BJP.
So, too the other failures. The CBI is now a meaningless agency as far as the public opinion is concerned. What sort of a doer is the PM, people ask.
If he can’t ensure one important agency, the CBI when it has unleashed its powers to destroy Opposition leaders and that too under the direct administrative powers of the PM?
So too other important agencies like the RBI? Also, the GST, which had
Become a bugbear for a large variety of segments, the MSEs and many other small traders and the poor too.
So, the media too have become a bi bold, the print and the TV channels, specially the pro-PM channels to have started to take up issues and causes that led, in our opinion, the slumbering IAS and other officials of high ranks to summon up courage and write directly an open letter.
So, the BJP, as a party and its satellites, also the PMO with all its powers couldnt produce results and many issues, schemes and welfare programmes remain unimplemented.
Now, the NITI Aayog itself has come out to find fault with the government’s moves to do away with the farm loans waivers. So, at the end of the day, so to say, the Modi government stands not on strong ground but on slippery slope on the eve of the mighty 2019 election game!
So, the agri distress and the solutions remain elusive as we write this column. Agriculture is a vast subject. Vadamalai remains committed to this sector as our very survival. Solutions are too many. It requires a new sense of urgency and commitment.
Let us take time and some inner courage to summon up courage to invite wide consultations. One instance is agri exports.
There is a decline. From agri exports to MSP to crop insurance there is plenty of work left undone!