Food Policy :
Super power India - Incredible India ? - One hundred fifty thousand farmers, have committed
suicide, in the past 15 years in India. Recently the plight of farmers in the country, and
especially in the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra, has been in focus. NGOs, Farmers'
Associations and Citizens of Delhi, came together for a candle light vigil on 16 Nov to tell
the government that something concrete must be done about the problems being faced by the
country's farmers.
Food policy and who has control over the direction of food policy is one of the most
important issues before political and social change concerned analysts and activists. In a
globalized world where the World Trade Organization WTO, IMF, periodically keep threatening to
play an
increasingly disruptive and coercive role in terms of global democracy and prescriptive
guidance on development and economics, food policy is one of the central issues that relate to
fair play and global justice.
The sheer fact that every sixth human being on this earth is an Indian, is a testimony to the
vital importance of debate and transparency in food policy issues for the Indian sub
continent. What we eat cannot and must not be decided in closed secretive rooms, or from
other continents. Simultaneously, the issue of viability of agriculture and farming as
a sustainable profession in Third World countries needs to be squarely faced, for while there can be
an exit policy for American and European farmers, an exit policy for 600 million Indian
farmers is virtually unthinkable.
Globalization :
Corporate globalization and food policy - Trade blocs and corporates are increasingly acquiring an
insatiable appetite, to determine what is researched in laboratories, what is grown in the farm fields,
what is sold in the name of good wholesome food on global markets, and what eventually finds itself
in the plates and stomachs of a global consumer market. The direction of globalization, is a critical
issue for Third World countries of course, but in a moral sense, it is also a test for First World
countries feeling threatened by competition from emerging economies in previously colonized
and, safely under control, countries.
Highlights :
- World Food Policy :
Majority World food policy perspectives
"World Food Policy website http://worldfoodpolicy.org attempts to provide a forum for
views, critiques and opinions that are representative of the long term interests of
the Majority World farmers, whose future depends inextricably on fighting famine, hunger, for
fair and just trade, trade justice and profitable agriculture. WorldFoodPolicy.org
seeks to examine the inextricable link between biotechnology, hunger, intellectual
property rights, food trade and poverty from viewpoints that critique corporate and
Trade Bloc perspectives. The website welcomes contributions from policy analysts,
campaigners, trade negotiators, bureaucrats, academics, activists.The website is run
from London UK and from New Delhi India and contributing editors are from Ireland."
- from World Food Policy website -
- Indian Food Policy :
Majority World food policy perspectives :
"Every sixth human being on the planet resides in India. Democratic food policy is meaningless
rhetoric, without listening to the views of the Indian farmer. Global institutions, multi lateral
institutions, specialist First World food policy research institutes, that try to coerce and
drum up global concurrence without ascertaining the views of the Indian farmers,
vis a vis global food policies can never be remotely democratic. Maybe their very mandate is
explicitly undemocratic.
India Food Policy website foodpolicy.in attempts to provide a forum for views,
critiques and opinions that are representative of the long term interests of the
Majority World, whose future depends inextricably on fighting famine, hunger, ensuring
fair and just trade, reversing global warming, trade justice and profitable agriculture."
- from Indian food Policy website -
- Mazdoor Kisan Niti :
Mazdoor Kisan Niti, was a unique attempt on shoe string budget, to cover and report on farmer / peasant
movements in the different states of India of 1980's. Sometimes a monthly, sometimes a fortnightly
journal, it was a Hindi journal, cobbled together by people from many and varied backgrounds.
Engineers and physicists from IIT Kanpur, philosophers and historians of science and technology,
pure science researchers who devoted themselves to a movement in Indian universities of 70's and 80's
called PPST (People's Patriotic Science and Technology), trade union activists, who themselves had
walked out from trade union politics and the oppressive straight jacket of Stalinist prescriptions
for developing countries, Gandhians who were deeply inspired by JaiPrakash Narain JP, and were seeking
ways to predict the direction of Indian politics in the next decade.
Mazdoor Kisan Niti and its editors, attempted to define and describe what was then called the new
Farmer's Movement in India. Sunil Sahasrabudhe, RK Gandhi, Surendra Suman, Vijay Jawandhia and
others were involved with movements like Shetkari Sanghathana in Maharashtra, Bhartiya Kisan Union
in Punjab, Haryana, Western UP, Central and eastern UP, Khedut Samaj in Gujarat, Ryot Sangha in Karnataka
and smaller movements in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar. A common characteristic of these movements, was
that they were simultaneous to the Green Revolution and the issues of subsidization of farming vis a vis
subsidization of industrial infrastructure in India, and the issues of whether farming per se, could
at all be a viable profession in India.
Bharat and India :
- Bharat and India :
Shetkari Sanghathana leader Sharad Joshi proposed the concept
of two parallel nations, Bharat and India, where Bharat was still being dictated by brown colonial
masters through electoral politics, after the white man had quit at the end of second World War.
The unstoppable stream of farmer suicides in the early part of this new century have conclusively
proved some of the central polarizations that Sharad Joshi had pointed out :
-
Indian farming is inherently unprofitable, unviable and unsustainable, the moment Bharat will refuse
to subsidize India. Sharad Joshi however believed that fair and equal alliances with global trade and
markets, bypassing the brown colonial
masters would unshackle the inherent ingenuity and adaptability of the Indian farmers. This idea
of Sharad Joshi has been opposed by others in Shetkari Sanghathana like Vijay Jawandhia. Sharad Joshi
has also failed in fostering a second line of acceptable leadership to the farmer's movement he led.
-
Indian farmers will keep becoming marginalized by the unsustainability of farming and agriculture as a viable
profession while, the urban Indian elite, forms intricate alliances, with global
corporate investments, trade blocs and bodies like WTO, World Bank, IMF, to bring about a new form of
"slavery to the farm" for the majority of Indian farm income dependant population in terms of liberal
farm debt, inadequate compensation for land acquired, dependance on external inputs, denial of control
on local resources like water, land and seeds, while ushering in contract farming and futures
commodities trading, as the gateways to a golden heaven, for Indian farm dependant populations, in the rhetoric
of Second Green Revolution.
-
The uniform bankruptcy of ideas, and inability of elected political parties, to address the Indian
agrarian crisis and the deliberate marginalization of Bharat by India. Terms like liberal farm debt, farming and crop
diversification, genetic and technological re-engineering, rural infrastructure investments,
commodities trading, are
still being used by government think tanks, Oxbridge economists and externally funded food policy NGO's /
study centres, as mantras and cliches, for solving the problem of large scale suicides amongst farmers,
without any attempt made to address the issues of sustainability of large agricultural populations
on farming incomes. Not one of these Oxbridge economists, think tank luminaries, and NGO bosses would
agree to even entertain the idea, of
sending their own children, into farming as a profession.
- An acceptable and forward looking formula, for decoupled farm payments based on the land holding and / or the number of adults
and children depending on a piece of land, is still miles away from Sixth Pay Commission deliberations.
This, while parliamentarians raise their own salaries, by mere acts of Parliament.
- Reliance Retail knows where the bucks are :
Reliance Retail unveils an ambitious plan of delivering food to Indian middle class -"from the farm to the fork" !!!
It seems all middlemen are suddenly villains. One more corporate giant, stiching invisible and
wonderful clothes for the Indian farmer.
Food Policy websites :
- World Food Policy Portal : WFP
World Food Policy website :
- Indian Food Policy Portal : IFP
Indian Food Policy website :
- A simple survey of farmers of India, would easily show that they will happily accept,
contract corporate farming, and commodities futures trading, if they are treated on par with
industrial labour, and given the same guarantees of assured income, offset against inflation,
in the Sixth Pay Commission. Why must farmers be excluded from Pay Commission diktats and goodies?
Upcoming Events :
-
"Indian Food Policy website foodpolicy.in attempts to provide a forum for views,
critiques and opinions that are representative of the long term interests of the
Majority World, whose future depends inextricably on fighting famine, hunger, for
fair and just trade, trade justice and profitable agriculture." -
- Indian Food Policy
Indian Food Policy : Some Links
Cotton farmers of Vidarbha : Resources
Wheat Imports by Indian agriculture ministry, at Rs 1200 per quintal : Indian farmers get Rs 700
CME, Medical Portals, 2d - 3d - Animations
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