This hurtle to disaster is faster than an F1 race
Don’t be too surprised if you see many a rural folk zip across the Greater NOIDA Expressway in a diesel Scorpio, clad in stiff white cottons and a neck full of bawdy gold chains not to mention the heavy rings which might look to be giving weight training to their fingers. He will also have a glitzy mobile phone in psychedelic colours, shades several inches above the brow and friends of similar ilk stuffed into the backseat with pop music blaring out of the tinted windows.
The speed of his vehicle will, of course, be more than 100 km an hour and the horn blaring loudly even though this youth brigade may have nothing to do with the billion rupee F1 track coming up on their very land.
For all practical purposes, these youth and their families are convinced they have finally arrived. Why? Because they have got some lakhs stashed away in their newly acquired bank lockers to take care of at least two generations, if not more — or so they think, having come into quick money due to either housing projects or mega sports ones like the Formula 1 race track at Greater NOIDA.
They couldn’t be more wrong. Some years down the line, they will most certainly be either part of a floating population highly vulnerable to criminality, or commit suicide, or turn to the fast growing alcohol population of the rural-urban belt that India has moved towards more rapidly than a meteor and more unthinkingly than a toddler.
In the last few years, the frenetic housing and industrial development projects taken up by various Governments — mainly at the cost of farm lands — has eaten up into not just the agriculture bowl that India once was famous for, but also dented for all times to come what experts call the “farm mindset” of future generations.
There has been no concern whatsoever from the Government’s side on the longtime fallout on these villagers who have no skills other than farming. With a bulk of them either getting swayed by the amount of ready cash being offered for their lands, or being forced by the Government to sell out under the Emergency acquisition clause, the end result is a disaster waiting to explode.
Consider this: A family sells the only source of livelihood — its land — to the Government for an X amount of money. They are ecstatic that now they can buy the car, the LCD, the marble for the house and every other urban luxury they always wanted to but couldn’t. And they rush to stack these things up. Some years down the line, the money gets over and they have no land to get back to. What do they do? They are neither skilled nor vocationally literate. All they had known their entire lives was to till their land, grow crops and sell them for a living, howsoever meagre. In come suicides, criminal elements and a huge chunk of society on the brink.
Really, the shrinking agriculture base of our country is not just about food insecurity but also hugely about a growing population on the edge. There are a hundred or more things that a Government can do to build the non-existent agricultural infrastructure and keep rearing farmers from coming generations instead of greedily taking over vast tracks of farmlands with no concern whatsoever on where this will leave our rural folks.
Already the rural exodus to cities is the most major problem for the growing Indian economy. Infrequent monsoons have shrunk paddy growing in many States. Not many in the villages want to till land and so they become waiters, security guards, drivers and the likes if they are lucky. If not, they become daily labour. Why this is not being plugged is a huge question not anybody in the portals of power is willing to answer.
But fact remains that what is happening in NOIDA — and I am sure in all other expanding areas which may not yet be in media focus — is alarming. As one village woman pointed out the other day, she has the TV but no electricity for long hours to run it; she also has an A/C but no supporting voltage; she has the seeds but no land; she has a big car on her doorstep which runs rarely as the money for fuel is just not available; she has a spoilt clutch of children who have graduated from the humble village laddooto chocolates — and they are in no mood to either study or listen to her sane advice.
All in all, she says, ever since her husband sold their four bighas of land to the Government, all hell has broken lose. Her husband now is a daily labour working on that very land which he owned two years ago; the money he got for it is almost over; no one in her family is skilled or literate enough to get another job and to top this, she has to deal with the growing aspirations of her children.
Is there anyone who really cares about this growing problem which will soon transcend individuality and concern an entire urban society? Isn’t it time to stop and think about this?
Source: Sunday Pioneer, July 31, 2011
The speed of his vehicle will, of course, be more than 100 km an hour and the horn blaring loudly even though this youth brigade may have nothing to do with the billion rupee F1 track coming up on their very land.
For all practical purposes, these youth and their families are convinced they have finally arrived. Why? Because they have got some lakhs stashed away in their newly acquired bank lockers to take care of at least two generations, if not more — or so they think, having come into quick money due to either housing projects or mega sports ones like the Formula 1 race track at Greater NOIDA.
They couldn’t be more wrong. Some years down the line, they will most certainly be either part of a floating population highly vulnerable to criminality, or commit suicide, or turn to the fast growing alcohol population of the rural-urban belt that India has moved towards more rapidly than a meteor and more unthinkingly than a toddler.
In the last few years, the frenetic housing and industrial development projects taken up by various Governments — mainly at the cost of farm lands — has eaten up into not just the agriculture bowl that India once was famous for, but also dented for all times to come what experts call the “farm mindset” of future generations.
There has been no concern whatsoever from the Government’s side on the longtime fallout on these villagers who have no skills other than farming. With a bulk of them either getting swayed by the amount of ready cash being offered for their lands, or being forced by the Government to sell out under the Emergency acquisition clause, the end result is a disaster waiting to explode.
Consider this: A family sells the only source of livelihood — its land — to the Government for an X amount of money. They are ecstatic that now they can buy the car, the LCD, the marble for the house and every other urban luxury they always wanted to but couldn’t. And they rush to stack these things up. Some years down the line, the money gets over and they have no land to get back to. What do they do? They are neither skilled nor vocationally literate. All they had known their entire lives was to till their land, grow crops and sell them for a living, howsoever meagre. In come suicides, criminal elements and a huge chunk of society on the brink.
Really, the shrinking agriculture base of our country is not just about food insecurity but also hugely about a growing population on the edge. There are a hundred or more things that a Government can do to build the non-existent agricultural infrastructure and keep rearing farmers from coming generations instead of greedily taking over vast tracks of farmlands with no concern whatsoever on where this will leave our rural folks.
Already the rural exodus to cities is the most major problem for the growing Indian economy. Infrequent monsoons have shrunk paddy growing in many States. Not many in the villages want to till land and so they become waiters, security guards, drivers and the likes if they are lucky. If not, they become daily labour. Why this is not being plugged is a huge question not anybody in the portals of power is willing to answer.
But fact remains that what is happening in NOIDA — and I am sure in all other expanding areas which may not yet be in media focus — is alarming. As one village woman pointed out the other day, she has the TV but no electricity for long hours to run it; she also has an A/C but no supporting voltage; she has the seeds but no land; she has a big car on her doorstep which runs rarely as the money for fuel is just not available; she has a spoilt clutch of children who have graduated from the humble village laddooto chocolates — and they are in no mood to either study or listen to her sane advice.
All in all, she says, ever since her husband sold their four bighas of land to the Government, all hell has broken lose. Her husband now is a daily labour working on that very land which he owned two years ago; the money he got for it is almost over; no one in her family is skilled or literate enough to get another job and to top this, she has to deal with the growing aspirations of her children.
Is there anyone who really cares about this growing problem which will soon transcend individuality and concern an entire urban society? Isn’t it time to stop and think about this?
Source: Sunday Pioneer, July 31, 2011
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