Skip to main content

Farmers and Criminals

O P Dhankar [Courtesy The Hindu]
Farmers are criminals and cowards, according to the BJP.  The party’s agricultural minister in Haryana, Mr O P Dhankar, explained the logic.  “Committing suicide is a crime, according to Indian law.  Any person who commits suicide escapes from his responsibilities and leaves the burden on his wife and innocent children and such people are cowards.”  Mr Dhankar was the former head of the BJP’s Kisan Cell.

It is easy to dismiss Mr Dhankar’s view as a personal opinion.  Rahul Gandhi, who seems to have found some enlightenment after his long contemplation abroad, has started questioning the BJP’s anti-farmer policies eloquently if not effectively enough.  His lack of effectiveness stems from his lack of vision.  It is not enough to question a system; one has to suggest an alternative one.  Mr Gandhi is yet to rise to the stature of a leader with any practical vision in spite of rubbing shoulders with the aam aadmi for quite some time.

Laptops for Haryana MLAs
Courtesy The Indian Express
Coming back to the BJP, look at what the party did in Haryana recently.  While the state did nothing to alleviate the misery of the farmers, it has declared a lot of benefits to the MLAs.  Every MLA is being given a free laptop.  Every MLA can claim a car loan amounting to Rs 20 lakh.  The housing loan for every MLA is increased to Rs 60 lakh.  All the 90 MLAs of the state have already received their free laptops.  All of them are quite sure to make ‘proper’ use of the car loans and housing loans.  And the poor farmers in the state will be labelled “criminals” and “cowards” because they are unable to make both ends meet.

Mr Dhankar did not understand the gravity of his statement or the situation in his state.  He stuck to what he said and asserted that some “drama” like suicide won’t make him change his statement.  Our tragedy as a nation today is the abundance of leaders like Mr Dhankar who lack understanding and sensitivity.  Lack of intelligence is not a crime.  But trying to lead a whole people without the ability to understand their problems and needs can be a crime. 

Who are the real criminals?  Our political leaders or the hapless farmers?


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. UppalMay 3, 2015 at 7:27 PM

    While i agree to some of your arguments,Indian media blows things out of proportion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lancelot QuadrasMay 4, 2015 at 1:09 PM

    Yes, these are true thoughts... On one side you call them cowards, on the other side you make your life full of leisure.. The amount of farmer deaths in the past decade can put us to shame in front of the entire world...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 4, 2015 at 8:27 PM

      Our politicians are terribly insensitive. Such insensitivity is worse than corruption.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more