a year back, hindu businessline put a riveting picture (also copied below) of a farmer (bheemrao manigempure) transforming himself onto a bullock and ploughing his fields.

as a followup they ran a story again on the present status. the story although small, lists the sorry state of the system. the system which increasingly is skewed towards urban elite and increasingly slams the rural farmers with adhoc schemes, zero followup/error corrections, high interest rate regimes for farmers, etc.

one more thing the story illustrates is that the fact that india's agriculture still is rainfed. if a rain falls in a season it will be a disaster for the farmers. this rainfed agriculture virtually exsists with no state support in terms of rain water harvseting, local water source maintenance, modern drip techniques, cropping inputs, etc.

as this blog has been pointing, it is easy to get a mercedes car with a 4% loan but it is not easy to get a loan for farming and the interest rates for farming will be in double digits.

and more farmers like bheemrao are not doing bullock carting, but they are either committing suicide or quitting farming altogether.

'development' surely is not for poor farmers of india.
(farmer as a bullock cart. one year back hindu ran this story. although there is no new picture, the situation on ground remains the same.)