Farmers in India are sufferers

Agriculture is one of the largest occupations on the planet, and giant corporations control significant chunk of it, leaving farmers completely out of the loop

Hyderabad: The Alladi Memorial Trust and the Centre for Human Rights, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organised the Alladi Memorial lecture by well-known journalist and Ramon Magsaysay awardee P Sainath on Monday.

In his lecture titled ‘Predicament of the Rural’, Sainath stated that today, the economic system is increasingly getting organised in a way that promotes concentration of wealth and productive resources at the cost of common good.

Agriculture is one of the largest occupations on the planet, and giant corporations control significant chunk of it, leaving farmers completely out of the loop. Stating that the farmers of the country are the sufferers, he further added that land is becoming monopoly of few people and broadly speaking this monopoly is also covering water and other resources.

Addressing the audience consisting of students, faculty, staff of UoH and guests from the city, Sainath stated that we need to look back at the original visions of our constitution drafters and should make sure that directive principles of state policy becomes the basis of our development planning otherwise we’ll continue facing compromise on our constitutional rights in the form of legislations such as RTE, Food Security Act etc that are primarily meant to truncate these rights.

He concluded his lecture with the mention that we can either have great concentration of wealth or the democracy but not both.