Skip to main content

Scam of genocidal proportions


India has a million problems right from the smallest scale to the Himalayan. I will try and touch upon these problems at some points of time.

I can be very sentimental about Agriculture and the misery being faced by our rural population. But today I just want to point to one little snippet from morning papers::

Life has been brought to a virtual standstill in Chawadal village in Haveri district by the truant monsoon. Manjunath Soorvagi (35), who would have normally sown maize and cotton in his five acres of unirrigated land by early June, only sowed in late July this year. “I could not have delayed sowing any longer because the Bt cotton seeds that I had would have turned sterile,” he says

The Hindu

Now think about it, seriously, would drive your car if you knew brakes were not working? Would you sow the seeds if you know what you are sowing is a futile exercise?

Farmers like Manjunath are not exceptional nor are they idiots. They are perfectly rational people trying to make a living. There are a whole generation of farmers who have decide to do the futile experiement – ploughing in more money, effort and prayers – just to avoid their investments to go a big waste.


The BT seeds are blatantly mis-sold with sky-high promises of good crop, pest resistance and drought resistances when in fact they fail in all these parameters. Simply put, companies like Monsanto are ripping off farmers with false promises and high hopes, and selling products that hardly stands the test of conditions. These performance parameters are fulfilled only in “ideal conditions” or test like conditions. Even a fool can tell you that’s a scam.

So, what does Government do? Nothing.

Are you surprised? Did you really expect government to do anything? Or more precisely, can government do anything about it? Answers are all negative.

Unfortunately, we have been quite for a long time. Long enough for lakhs of farmers to commit suicide in desperation. If there ever was a scam of genocidal proportion, this is it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cognitive rules of business presentations

In his recent book, Clear and to the Point, Kosslyn explained that the four rules of PowerPoint are: The Goldilocks Rule, The Rudolph Rule, The Rule of Four, and the Birds of a Feather Rule. Here's how they work. The Goldilocks Rule refers to presenting the "just right" amount of data. Never include more information than your audience needs in a visual image. As an example, Kosslyn showed two graphs of real estate prices over time. One included ten different numbers, one for each year. The other included two numbers: a peak price, and the current price. For the purposes of a presentation about today's prices relative to peak price, those numbers were the only ones necessary. The Rudolph Rule refers to simple ways you can make information stand out and guide your audience to important details -- the way Rudolph the reindeer's red nose stood out from the other reindeers' and led them. If you're presenting a piece of relevant data in a list, why not mak...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value of dollar - Part 1

A Simple Perspective Will Do The date is 2000-05-28. Don't you get tired of all the bad news bears reminding you of all these instabilities, excesses, and 'potential' tensions in the global economy? After all, hasn't it always been like that? Yes it has, but not in money it hasn't. Increasingly, investors find it harder to know where to put their savings. What about Government Bonds? Wrong. Their recent record of capital losses have wiped out your guaranteed yields, probably because the stock market keeps crowding them out, and this even in a strong dollar and low inflation environment. Furthermore, there is no reliable liquidity and potentially poor quality debt in the corporate sector. Foreign assets? Wrong. Most of the world's economies are riskier, have been under performing, and also, there is this thing called currency risk. Like how is the average person gonna cope with currency...
Post a Comment
Read more

Depreciation of British Pound 1900-2000

When the Bank of England was formed the powers to create money was finally transferred to private hands. The creation of Fed in US, was just a part of this cycle. Though it is a common knowledge US Dollar has depreciated nearly 100% since the creation of Federal Reserve, the same is the case of all the currencies across the globe. For example, below is the UK Parliament data that highlights the depreciating value of Pound.
2 comments
Read more