Love (for farming), in the time of Corona!

Lets start with a Haiku!

Plums Bloom in the mountains,

Making Sakuras Blush across the seven seas,

Land where we all return

Well technically it is not in Kanji, but it is meter and meaning complete. It speaks about the importance of ones own land (or country) and the perceived benefits of it being better (or worse) than lands across the seven seas. To where we are born (or soil we belong to) is the best place where any of us can be!!

Each living creature, save man knows its geographical limits to existence, save Human. Even those who migrate long distances always known when to return back to the soil where they belong - save Human!!

A very wise man once asked in rhetoric - each living being knows its physical limit for access to food e.g. An Ant knows how far it has to reach for food before it has to turn back to its home, a cow knows how far its hooves can carry it for the day before it has to turn back to its manger. Nature has given each being the ability to find its life and livelihood within the geography of where a Humans feet can carry them for the day. Then why does only a human have to struggle for their food?

Thus this Haiku.

Here we prune a Red-Bartlett pear tree to allow it to bloom and fruit well this year. For what I wonder now?

In these times of a global pandemic, where all hypocrisy of the the consumerist globalized mindset lay bare - when all the money in the world cannot buy food from the farmers - heck - now even money is digitized so those with the perceived sense of money cannot even have the paper to eat in times of distress!! - yet consumers are wanting to protect themselves, locked up in their homes, but wanting their providers - the farmers to risk and take stress of making sure the consumers mouth is fed.

The farmers, graceful as they have been - shining the same like the sun - on Hitler and Gandhi alike - continue to oblige. Why any more I ask?

Consumers do not even have a critical knowledge or sense on why 1 kg of tomato should be INR 40/- per kilo and not 400/-? What does it take for that 1 kg of vegetable to be bought to your doorstep by a farmer in these times of Corona - with the risk of being harassed and beaten by police along the way, risk the cost of transportation to provide 'cheap food' to the, already whining about price, consumer? Why should the farmer risk it all for the sake of the consumer?

Is it love? Is it duty? Why at all?

One argument made in various networks is that since the rural poor do not have money to buy their own food, and that 'wealth' can only be bartered in exchange for food by pandering to the Urban consumer - the existing supply chain should be somehow saved - to save both the consumer and the farmer.

My question remains - do we not have enough consumer in rural areas in India? Does the maximum population still not stay in the villages? Can they not pay for their food (it is an oxymoronic question actually!! assuming they have only gone hungry till date)?

In the past government of India has run many schemes to support rural poor and farmers even by cash transfers directly to their accounts. Thus the answer to the question of 'wealth' can easily be addressed by the state by putting money for food directly into the accounts of the rural poor. Those who are still not covered can always rely on the PDS system run by the government.

For the urban poor, again the state runs shelter homes, Gurdwaras provide langar services and there are many ways in which the state can support the most vulnerable in times of stress.

Now lets come to the middle and upper income groups in the cities - those bolting themselves into their secure housing complexes - with RWA and societies, strictly adhering to Quarantine norms - consider -

1. Its like jail - no one is allowed to step outside the boundary of the housing complex
2. Each pack of water of food is sprayed with some sort of a 'sanitizer' before it is handed over - with appropriate social distancing between vendors and consumers.
3. Each person is made to stand in a circle at a distance from the other
4. Some person 'authorized' by the management is going around spraying an unknown pesticide in railings - where children run - in lifts on seat of vehicles and so many other places - for what?

I remember when this happened last - when concentration camps were run. Where substances presumed to be the cure turned out to be worse than the disease!!

It can be debated if social distancing is actually halting the disease but this is besides the point. What about the garbage collector, shop vendors, police man, security guards? Are they not human - should they not be quarantined in "Their" homes instead of serving the so called precious middle and upper class families. Why can't the over-entitled part of the society fend for themselves like everyone in villages and urban poor? Is each housing complex/colony with security guards? Where does majority of the population live with pandering of the consumer as much as the cities? Why should anyone risk themselves for the upper edges of the economy?

In these times of corona, if there is fairness (wishful thinking I know) - the consumers will have to step out of their homes and get access to food from the farms or the farmers. This hypocrisy of valuing ones life more than the others, just because you have a perceived sense of power due to a bank balance has to stop. The consumer has to start respecting the farmer and quietly pay the 'true' price for the food and stop their whining and complaining.

The only way risk can be reduced in times of pandemics - and history is judge to this in terms of H1N1, MERS, SARS and so many others - is to let the disease settle in the population and have people focus on their own bodily immunity to fight it out.

Safe food is the only solution available now, and the times of today are slowly turning to hate! The consumer is getting jittery about availability of supply, having to stand in lines, wear masks. The shopkeeper is getting fined and harried for not being efficient in supplies. The farmers is being made to feel vulnerable by the system and also bear risk of market access for the sake of the urban consumers. The states have already done a shoddy job of causing a massive economic downturn - which seems irreversible across the world now!

In these times of stress, yet the farmer continues (and is expected) to farm. The love for the land and soil is so great, that it matters now who the crop grows for and reaches to. It is the duty that must, just, be done. At the days before the lock down was announced our trust Gram Disha -

-was working with cluster of farmers in Uttarakhand to start a project of food and eco-system in the village Kalun, District Pauri Garhwal. Here are some snapshots -

We are planting apple trees so that in the years to come, diversity of fruit crops can bring about better incomes to traditional farming systems. I wonder what for now? Apart from the villagers themselves being able to eat the fruit, not much point remains on why - fat bank balances of the cities should allure them any

more. One pandemic to the next, what has happened now may just as well happen again. So is there any other reason than to shore up the upper economic class hypocrisy anymore? Not unless they are ready to share the risk farmers are supposed to take - by paying the true price for the food and also by stretching themselves the extra mile by accessing farm gates if they have to. Is food not the most important source of life itself?

At our farm group in Himachal Pradesh, we continue pruning trees - plum, apricot, pears, apples. I wonder now to what end? Perhaps it is only right that villages should first intra-network among themselves and sell surplus produce to each other rather than shoring up urban markets.

Money can always be spent by the welfare state of the villages, and cities which have a fund surplus, restaurants, cafes and truly be left to fend for themselves and try reaching farm gates for their supplies. Perhaps then the cities will know and agree to the real cost of food and be ready to pay the true price to the producers? E.g. what is the true price of this Rhododendron flower blooming around the forests at another Apple Plantation site in Uttarakhand -

In our housing complex, the residents are shored up in apartments, but expect, security guards, vendors, garbage collectors and everyone else to keep roaming around the roads, servicing them. Is the life of a dependent economic person less important that those living in apartments, in times of Corona? I think it is time, people (urban consumers) start to critically assess their existence - for if not in this Corona then the next, this status quo of false sense of luxury will slowly diminish. This idea of supermarket based economy as a be all - end all of consumerist existence must change.

A good decade ago, when I switched from the career of ambition - IT, High-Tech, Semiconductors, Computer Networks - to the career of life, there used to be a joke which friends used to talk about. Soil (Sand) can be used to make microchips, or Potato chips, looks like I preferred the latter. But to really think of what is important in life, microchips or potato chips - I think, hands down, the answer is obvious.

The government too, has given into the media scare, and reacted too harshly to the measure of handling the pandemic. If you have read so far, and feel for the sentiment and wish to know more about the reality of pandemic, its past history and possible future - read about the so called 'flattening the curve' here -

Or about how to truly handle the pandemic by not declaring another emergency in the nation and shutting down the economy, but by letting it settle down, and focusing on the immunity of the people, but safe food (nutrition), clean air, sunlight and freedom. Else from one pandemic to the next, it will only get worse. See here -

With at least one country across the world practicing this -

At the moment, I am still struggling to get out of the 'jailed up' housing complex where we are stopped from exiting the main gate. Strangely we are stopped by the security guard, who is probably a farmer now working as a guard here, who somehow has it convinced that his life is not as important to be outdoors on the road and risk it for the residents, who have somehow social distanced themselves to some kind of assumed safety - but practice no distancing when once in the confines of their home! So much for educated people - logic and reason. I still hope that one day/some way - all the security guards, vendors, farmers, policemen etc - all should just stop go back to their own homes - villages and farms and know that - just like the ant knows how far to go for their food, they too will be given by the seed, soil, rain, bullocks and the perpetual cycle of food as it has existed for eons, shall continue.

For the IT company - walas - LinkedIn, if this message is to stop henceforth, its ok that it does. This idea of ambition in careers raining supreme over what farmers do for the society has to change. That is what one must teach children primarily to love the soil, love the farm, respect the farmer and then build everything above it. Quite unlike today, where most real estate high rise apartments, in Noida where I stay, is built so easily on farm land - destroying the food cycle and security with such great ease!

I would love to go back to the farm again, but for now am crafting my escape from this house in Noida, which is strangely no better than an Alcatraz today! I guess I am just a cough and sneeze away from the 'They' coming and snatching me away from my family - perhaps even for the last time they see me or I see them. Rights truly seem suspended and what is a lock down is only an Emergency by a different name (Ask yourself the question - are you free to go to a court of law today? Will they even allow you in?). Or read this for sound reason -

Guess this sets all political parties alike from 1980s to 2000s. How, do you ask? Its not too difficult to take a life today I guess, here is a case in point - put yourself in the parents shoes and see if it will be any different for you?

Will there be a case of abetment to suicide by the airport authorities, by the medical authorities? Well, demands for justice say yes, but I wonder where Mr. Justice is nowadays? with courts, all but, shut down, and no way in sight to approach them, with the roads lined by Policemen to stop you along the way!! Or perhaps any one of them - especially - that man reported to be beaten by the police for stepping out to buy milk!

Who is responsible for their deaths? Them? If yes, then it is worth pitying the living, for the dead have escaped the misery of the times today. I would say that their death is distributed to each of us alive, those having taken the decision and those accepting to obey by it. There is a story of the lizard which fell in a pot of kheer, dropped by an eagle in the sky. Yamraj being questioned on who is responsible for the death of people eating the kheer - he says - everyone who took part in the Kheer reaching where it is! I feel for these people, and for the powerless against the might of the state! Where do I take this pain and what do I do with it? I am still trying to reason! - Vaishno jan to tene kahiye je, peed parayi jaane re!

In my admission - I too belong to the same 'class' of the 'middle' which has shown great disrespect to the oldest need for human kind, farming. Having admitted to this folly, am trying, as hard as I can to - be the change - for myself and immediate family at-least. Do not know if that is going to make an iota of change in the society (perhaps it may not), but the least one can do is try. If you do agree with, even parts of, this, think of a question - What have I done today, to help the farmers of our country? - perhaps the answer lies closer to your heart than you may think. Then, perhaps, next time political leaders ask to go out to the balcony and clap for 5 minutes, perhaps the first person to come to mind while doing so may be a farmer!

Perhaps the only one who can now roam free in the forest, is this secretive friend, who cares two hoots about the Corona scare. It is said that weary travelers are guided through the forest by his shadow. He trails you, on the orders of a higher nature, to protect at times and punish at times. That it is actually with their permission that we are able to be as close to dwelling the forests as we are in India and yet not fear to work on our farms.

Perhaps, if we catch a glimpse of this elusive we know that we are not entirely an illusion! See if you can see yourself in his eyes - and ask yourself - are you really free to Love in the time of Corona!