Faces of India – 344, Rural Agriculture in Karnataka
Faces of India
a series through which I intend to portray the various characters of my country whom I met during my travels. I bring back souvenirs, frozen moments from my travels, why not some memories of people I have met and interacted during the travels. Faces of India is a weekly series in my blog since MARCH 2011. See more here…
Rural Agriculture in Karnataka
Agriculture and rural development in India is in a bad shape even after so many years of independence. Rural agricultural practices are so disheartening to see. During my several road trips across India, I had the opportunity to see the state of rural agriculture in Karnataka. It is disheartening to see the complete absence of mechanized farming.
Processes like sieving, winnowing and threshing are still done manually. This man in picture is sieving the farm produce. Just nearby I saw a huge mound of grains, weighing definitely more than 100kgs. How long will it take you to sieve all this? I asked. It will take few days he replied. Till then they are mercy of weather God, praying He doesn’t decide to pour all of a sudden.
The 2 ladies are winnowing, depending totally on mercy of wind God so that he blows hard enough to blow the husk away. She lifts up the husks with grains and drops them from a height. The heavier ones gets collected just below and the lighter husk gets blown away. For threshing they lay the sheaves on roads and wait for heavy vehicles to run over them.
So much hard work! Who wants to be a farmer?
Rural agriculture in Karnataka
Especially farmers with small peice of land can’t afford as mechanisation costs r more. The machines are charged hourly or daily basis which is out of reach for small and marginal farmers. NGO’s / Government should look into it for suitable solution.
Well said! It is disheartening that nothing seems to change.
What happened to kisans of Maddur. They were same in 2016,15, 14 and so on. For that matter everywhere in Karnataka and rest of India. Nothing seems to change. The situation will be same even in 2019 and beyond. Yes, they cannot offord a decent accommodation, a school, couple of dresses, health etc. Thanks to the mind set of educated people around them and non agricultureists is the cities and in politics. That’s all and that’s the end.
Unless we realise that farmers are the backbone of every village, Town and city. We, the so called educated lot will not survive long enough, if the former just decides to produces food for his own family and and few more in his place for their own consumption and Not For Sale.
Unfortunately he is not that selfish and we are not that concerned.
My heart bleeds.
That’s why they deserve to be remembered! Jai Kisan!
Hats off to him and his associates.
An aptly portrayed portrait.
Great post _()_