More is the production, less is the remuneration to the farmer. Recently there were 5 farmer suicides in Baghpat--an agriculturally fertile area. One of them had grown sugarcane and the factory did not pay him till to date. Who will fix the price for the farmer and how? Farmers will have to be connected to subsidy directly otherwise there will be more suicides and greater exodus from villages to the cities.
ANURADHA TALWAR OF PASCHIM BANGA KHET MAJDOOR SAMITI--
The trade off at WTO is between livelihood and trade. The government has chosen to safeguard livelihood by safeguarding food security. Agriculture is passing through crisis with a growth rate of 1%-3%. If government lifts MSP, it will collapse totally. It is said that TFA will create 21 million jobs, but for whom, is anybody's guess.
The next WTO Ministerial meeting will be held in 2015 when the battle between food and trade will see its final outcome. The desperate attempts by the developed countries to get the TFA ratified, leaving all other issues aside, seems to confirm concerns that neither is the TFA for development as is being publicized, nor will the developed countries be interested in allowing a balanced outcome to the developing world. This seems to be a contest between two groups--one that gains from trade expansion and the other who does not understand trade but understands hunger.
Let us hope that Geneva does not remain a flash in the pan and that India sticks to its stand.
(The author is the Managing Editor of Citizen News Service - CNS. She is a J2J Fellow of National Press Foundation (NPF) USA and received her editing training in Singapore. She has earlier worked with State Planning Institute, UP and taught physics at India's prestigious Loreto Convent. She also co-authored and edited publications on gender justice, childhood TB, childhood pneumonia, Hepatitis C Virus and HIV, and MDR-TB. Email: shobha|AT|citizen-news.orgEmail address, website: www.citizen-news.org)
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