"Free India was born in very difficult circumstance". Justify the statement with any two suitable argument.
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Answer:
Our freedom was born with hunger. It was born in the backdrop of the Bengal famine. If you read the newspapers dated August 15, 1947, one part was about freedom, the other was food shortage. This is why Jawaharlal Nehru said after Independence that everything else can wait but not agriculture.
The battle against hunger is a battle we have to win. It requires a fusion of political will, professional skill and people's participation. Our country is fortunate to have fairly good water resources, reasonably good rainfall, a hardworking farming population. We must bring about a marriage between brain and brawn in rural professions. We need a large number of educated young people to go into farming using science and new eco-technologies. We have all the necessary ingredients for progress. But the gap between scientific knowhow and field level do-how is large.
The green revolution was the product of four things: the first was technology. The genetic technology of the 1960s was transformational and changed people's understanding of wheat and rice yields. The second was services that took the technology to the field like extension services, credit and insurance; third was public policies of input-output pricing like the prices commission, and lastly, the farmers' enthusiasm. Today, unfortunately, the most important thing is missing — farmers' enthusiasm. A revolution cannot come from a government programme. A National Sample Survey study says 40% of the farmers want to leave farming. It's important to revive that enthusiasm.
There's no shortage of food in terms of production. Why are people going hungry then?
There are three parts to the problem. First, availability of food in the market, which is not bad; second, access to food or purchasing power. Under NREGA, a worker gets Rs 100 a day for 100 days i.e Rs 10,000 a year. If he has a family of five, it means Rs 2,000 a year per person. When dal is selling at Rs 80 to Rs 90 a kilo, how do they buy it? Third, is the absorption of food in the body, which means getting clean drinking water, sanitation. Otherwise, it means a leaky pot — a child would keep getting infections.
How do you view the green revolution now, when the widespread use of pesticides in Punjab is being linked to increase in cancer rates in some areas?
In 1966, I had said the green revolution should be an “evergreen revolution”, which is enhancement of productivity in perpetuity without ecological harm. I had warned against overuse of pesticides and fertilizers and against converting the green revolution into a greed revolution.
What can be done to set things right?
There are two aspects of the green revolution — farm ecology and farm economy. But if farm ecology goes wrong, nothing else will go right. Soil quality must be taken care of, water quality must be ensured. We should also be ready for climate change. I call it a two-pronged strategy — get the best of a good monsoon or climate and second, minimize the adverse impact of unfavourable weather.
Why are you objecting to Bt brinjal?
I didn't oppose it. I supported Jairam Ramesh's moratorium. I chaired a committee in 2004 and recommended in a report the setting up of a regulatory authority, which would have its own testing facilities. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee has no such facility. I advocate safe and responsible use of biotechnology particularly in the case of human nutrition. Some long-term residual toxicity tests should be done. If you introduce some good-yielding hybrids, farmers will grow only those. So I said, “Use the moratorium to collect all the genetic material or germ plasm.” We also need a literacy programme for the public.
You have been influenced by the philosophy of the Mahatma and Sri Aurobindo. into medicine. But the papers were full of Bengal famine and I asked myself how I could serve my country better. I got calls from a medical college and an agricultural college. After I joined, the principal of the agricultural college asked me why I took up agriculture because the subject was not considered as important as medicine!