Food for Thought

Today most Indians celebrate their harvest festivals. In Tamilndau it is called Pongal. In northern parts it is Makara shankaranthi and Baisakhi. Almost all cultures have this harvest festival. Festivals are there to cement a bond between individuals and the community. Celebrations bring in cohesion. But over a period, due to lack of improvisation,  these festivals become rituals and once they attain such status the youth lose interest in celebrations. They keep themselves aloof and it has become a fashion to declare that 'I don't celebrate'. O.K.

Let us talk about the celebrations and celebrate the celebrators. Out of all necessities of man FOOD is paramount. His survival depends on this. But the 20th century and the present one is taking the peoples and the societies towards cities. Cities can produce goods and definitely not food (rice and wheat). But today's kids think 'food' will be produced and procured at the click of a mouse in google searches.  Just as kids believe the ATM machines can give  money  any time and at our request, the adults too believe today that they can place orders 'on line' and relax. 

The beauty of the cruel story is we need to have paddy fields and farms for agriculture to keep this humanity alive. The nations around the globe should go for legislation that bans the conversion of cultivable lands into factory sites and residential and commercial buildings. If we want agriculture can be declared as an industry and provide all the incentives required. The barbaric custom of 'price any thing from the city and bargain anything that comes from the village' must go. For instance the price of a litre of a coke's is fixed, whereas the price of a kilogram of tomato/ potatoes may be 5 rupees or 50 rupees and the buyers fixing the price instead of the seller.


To take it further a kilogram of potatoes is 2-10 rupees and fixed by the buyer and not the farmer who produced it. It goes to factory and returns as wafer chips packed in attractive poly-pack and  the 'value added cost' is 10 rupees for every 30 grams. This cruelty must stop. Let the producer fix the rate irrespective of the origin of the produce/product. If that happens no one will leave farming and their villages.