The country’s literati, including the ever alert fraternity of analysts of its economic affairs and politically noisy ambience in all the regions, seem to have taken a holiday from writing articles on the two virtually dead topics namely, corruption and pollution. Other subjects that they have given a free run to their pens have been inflation, environmental degradation and cash stashed in Swiss Banks by you-know-who, not necessarily in that order of subjects. The masses have joined the informed as well as the not-so-well-informed flock in berating the successive governments on the issues of rising unemployment rate, writing off loans taken by farmers, unremunerative prices for agriculture’s output, grossly inadequate outlay on public health, exorbitant tariffs of privately managed hospitals of all hues and educational institutions, to name the major ones.

The claims being made by both the incumbent Union Government led by National Democratic Alliance and many State Governments, particularly Government of Karnataka highlighting the pro-people measures in a long list and stronger claims of fulfilling almost, if not all, assurances given to the electorate on the eve of the previous polls to the Parliament and State Legislative Assembly have been described as pure fiction in many circles of analysts.

Seasoned columnists of largely circulated and widely followed dailies are of the view that the land’s agricultural economy has been doing very poorly even as the output of food crops is rising year on year. After nearly four years of down trend, the index of industrial production is encouraging. An inordinately delayed but long overdue policy has just been aired by the top brass of the Central Government, namely a) Providing skill-driven jobs for the rural youth in their own territory and b) Doubling the farmers’ income. The hurdles being spelt out by scientists, politicians and others as the root cause of slowdown in India’s agriculture sector are i) Obsolete technology, ii)Lack of quality seeds, iii) Improper management of irrigation facilities, iv) Defective fertilisers and v) Overuse of pesticides.

An expert on India’s agri sector’s scenario has cited conventional wisdom that there are too many people living off land to make all of them better off. The debate on food for all and adequate income to the farming fraternity to feed their families cannot be taken lightly.