In several pre-budget interviews featured in the media, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has stated that the Union Budget 2016-17 scheduled to be presented to a fractious Parliament and the nation on February 28, will focus on ramping up investment in the agriculture and social sectors — education and health — of the economy. This realignment of national development priorities is overdue because decades of rural neglect under the Soviet-inspired centrally-planned economic development model has precipitated a full-blown crisis in Indian agriculture, which precariously sustains two-thirds of the country’s population, and is inexorably destabilising the Indian economy. Unfortunately, there is insufficient awareness within the establishment — academia and the intelligentsia included — about the scale of distress in the rural hinterlands of the country. According to recently released official data of state governments, 3,228 and 1,002 farmers ended their lives by suicide in Maharashtra and Karnataka in the period April-December 2015, which translates into 16 suicides per day in these two states of the Indian Union of 29 states and seven Union territories. Although these two states are in the forefront of the grim harvest of farm suicides, evidence suggests that after three successive years of erratic rainfall during which the average annual agriculture growth has halved to 1.1 percent, other states of the Union are not far behind. It’s highly probable that over 100 impoverished farmers unable to bear the burden of indebtedness, are killing themselves everyday countrywide, leaving behind hapless widows and hundreds of orphaned children. Falling demand for manufactures and consumer goods in rural India is a major factor behind crashing stock markets, creeping stagflation and rising unemployment. Regrettably, the Central and state governments have only exacerbated the situation by raising the compensation paid out to families of farmers ending their lives from Rs.2 lakh to Rs.5 lakh. This ill-conceived solution has perhaps incentivised debt-related suicides and prompted prolonged enquiries into the cause of death, making a bad situation worse for dependents. The deep-rooted causes of rural distress that need urgent attention of government policymakers and civil society organisations are poor schooling in rural government primaries; inadequate access to healthcare; almost total absence of law and justice machinery; unchecked official corruption, especially in irrigation projects; lack of insurance and bank credit and policy roadblocks preventing the establishment of a viable downstream food processing industry which has long depressed farm produce prices. Boosting investment in social services and infrastructure — rather than sops, subsidies and loan waivers — is the prescript for transforming rural India and securing the future of the long suffering rural majority. Unless these issues are addressed and reforms in rural governance and development undertaken in right earnest, the Indian economy will never attain long-term growth and stability. Preventing destruction of Indian science The mixing of vedic mythology with science at the annual Indian Science Congress (ISC) held in Mysore from January 3-7 once again eclipsed debate and discussion about the pathetic condition of contemporary Indian science and technology. Presentations glorifying Lord Shiva as the “greatest…
