The faceless farmer hogs the headlines often. He starves to death....... not to uphold any cause, but out of sheer helplessness and drought brought about by lack of sufficient monsoon, failure of crop and other reasons. Poverty in scarcity!

At other times he reaps a bounty, and then finds it difficult to find buyers for his produce. Since there is surplus all around, the prices drop steeply and the income he gets turns out to be far less than what he had invested to produce it in the first place. He gets entrenched deeply in the debt trap and resorts to suicide as the only way of recovering from this predicament. Poverty in abundance!!

While this goes on, he is promised free power, free dhotis / sarees and what not, by the powers that be. He incidentally constitutes the largest electorate. So, every party competes for his vote by bribing him with all the above, and also by playing up to his sentiments. Agricultural produce will never be taxed, even if some rich farmers become filthy rich thanks to their cash crops and estates. While a subsistence farmer obviously needs all the support he can get, isn't it ridiculous that people leading 5 star lives don't get taxed even a penny? The land of tamasha (a.k.a. the great nation of India or Bharat) never ceases to amaze me.

One of the tactics to bribe him and win over his heart is to play up to the galleries and rake up river-sharing controversies. Controversies that could potentially divide the nation, that could alienate people forever by sowing the seeds of hatred. Taking a leaf from the current affairs that's going on in the neighboring region to illustrate my point, Thiru.Karunanidhi Avargal (translates to 'Karunanidhi Himself') has decided to rake up the Cauvery issue again (yawn) - his motivation? the need to portray himself as the saviour of the Tamil species, now that the Tamil makkal (i.e. public) have made him their sole custodian by awarding all the parlimentary seats to his party and his allies. The reason they did so was because Jayalalitha was too lousy and autocratic - a fact not lost on the observers, but somebody needed to occupy the moral high ground and Thiru Karunanidhi Avargal it shall be, to jump at the opportunity.

It needs two to tango, and the esteemed politicians of Karnataka will not be left far behind in this game of hatred. They will pass a resolution denying water to TN, and there will be a flood of emotions (in place of water) in both states against the other side. I was in Bangalore over the weekend and was amused to read the sentiments expressed by the respected readers of the local newspaper. "Despite the rains and tears of the Kannadigas, our reservoirs are still not sufficiently filled up and hence we cannot release water to TN" read one comment. Don't shed so much tears, dearies... not very healthy. I'm sure the Chennai papers would carry equally ridiculous comments, if not worse. I'm visiting Chennai the coming weekend and shall post an update :)

Now for some good old 'sense'. I'm not an irrigation expert, nor am I aware of what is a 'fair share' of a resource like water. But I am aware of the fact that over the years, vast expanses of land have been brought under cultivation in both the states. In fact, the increase is much more drastic in Karnataka than in TN. As a result, the thirst for water has been on the upside in both the states and especially in Karnataka. Given this, the traditional mode of irrigating lands (pumping infinite quantities of water into the farm) becomes literally a drain on the precious resource. There is only so much water as before, but several more thousands of hectares of land to irrigate, than before. Doesn't the word 'scarcity' ring out loudly from the above? Are we deaf not to hear it clearly enough? Or we would rather get carried away by emotions / sentiments and ignore cold logic? There is an urgent need to modernize our irrigation methods. Drip irrigation, rain water harvesting, ground water utilization..... the works. The experts know better. But they won't be heard. The drama enacting politician attracts better attention than some one who speaks logic.

Another question that comes up - the widespread farming activity causing (in addition to water scarcity) a food surplus, consequent bringing down of prices, filling up of FCI godowns, rats eating the rots, farmers committing suicide coz they can't command the required price to meet their debts..... who puts a stop to this vicious circle and where? I think there are way too many people who are out there farming, and who need to move up the value chain and shift to developing software or design automobiles instead (higher education, native language commerce..... suddenly all my 'unintelligent' posts seem to make sense, don't they? ;) ). Until then, we will have to make do with the politicians providing us the evening entertainment on TV screens and painfully witness more suicide/starvation stories.