Should India Move towards Industrialisation at cost of Agriculture ?

Hi,

Today i read an article on Hindu, in which our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has explained that, to keep GDP up and to eradicate poverty among Farmers, we should focus on Industrialization and leave agriculture…This may sound good for short term basis, but if we look at the future or say other countries who moved towards industrialization, we would get an idea that, it’s mostly about monetary and still would keep poor out in the dark. Let’s just take an example here. Countries like India are only good as long as crops are cultivated, and we are great at it. Just see how much we are exporting to other nations. We have surplus amount of resources, mainly in agricultural department. As they used to say, we feed the world’s second largest populated country and still able to export stuffs to other countries. That’s how vast our resources are. Just say country like us plan to move ahead for sake of money , as currently it is the one, which governs all other commodity . We kill all the cultivable land for sake of industries. And let’s say all other similar countries do the same , by 2020 , the world , i didn’t say half the world or quarter of the world would starve , i really mean that , the whole world would STARVE. There won’t be any cultivable areas… and when money is prioritized over food / water / and other basic amenities, we would end in a world which has no resource but only man made money. In the future Food, Water will be the most important resource to the entire planet. Not a car or a mobile or any other fancy stuff.

That said, let take another living example … DUBAI. Dubai has no cultivable land; it imports nearly all the food from other countries. How? They have one good resource … Fossil Fuel… and researchers have already predicted that within few years fossil fuel would be depleted and Dubai which is now one of the richest countries would be a deserted land and would be there is but tall sky scrapers. There won’t be any job and already people from India are leaving because of recent oil crises depleting wealth among the riches. Dubai cannot sustain such an industrialized environment.
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One thing we have to remember is we people are one among many species which share this world. One world. Instead of a mutual understanding with nature and environment, we are still going crazy over exploiting the LIMITED resources which our planet could offer. Always remember that, this is a finite world, there is no bowl which gives infinite food or no river which flows even in drought … We have to learn to live within our limits at the same time embracing both nature and human progress as a species. We are becoming intelligent and more sophisticated as each day passes, but that doesn’t mean we have to kill nature and move on.
Many countries in the world have adopted agriculture as their main industry. Many people have started growing plants and trees and are almost self-sustained. We as a country cannot compromise our pillar – Agriculture for sake of industry and to increase GDP. GDP measures all product and by suppressing agricultural products and increasing oil based products ( nearly all products from plastic / rubber / car are oil based ) simply won’t help as anyone who just sees the future just a 10 years from now would know that oil based products are not the best bet any country would take. We have to find ways to improve agriculture and at the same time make agriculture a profitable business model , as there are many who have already left agriculture for sake of short term profit like real estate to make them realize that this the future , which we have to live with and improve upon.

There is already water scarcity, and India has signed pact with Alaskan Private Company to import water. When we have got great rivers, we simply don’t utilize them properly and politicians are not willing to take step to make amendments within our country. Instead these corrupted politicians are signing agreements and allowing foreign multinational Corps to invade our agricultural land and place a irreversible chain, thereby we are becoming more and more dependent on foreign nations for basic commodities.
As a present trend for farmers is to leave their land for sake of money as government is not willing to help them and move on to nearby companies. This is setting the balance off and as more real estate business men are offering large amount, more farmers are ready to move on. They are our invisible pillars, and we are losing them at a faster rate. Where 5-10 years before we had agricultural land, we have either big companies or vast villa`s …

This surely is not a way to progress …. And sooner the big heads realize, better would be for tomorrows India

-Urs Siva