26 December 2013, 12:12 PM IST
What do North Indian issues of non-payment to sugarcane farmers, single crop cultivations like sugarcane, climate change, sleeping rough, communal riots, disease provoked by diabetes, and people sleeping on the steps of Delhi Metro stations being asked to vacate before the first trains pelt through have in common with changing crop patterns in Guntur and soft-drink companies moving in to push more sweetened coloured beverages listed under 14.4.1 of the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) have in common?
Evertything. Just as the new Government in Delhi will have to do everything to try and clean up the muck left over by around half-a-dozen really big scams as presents from the previous formations "in power" in Delhi - lower pricing for electricity by the privatised utilities, right to water instead of theft by the water mafias, easier and better access to public transport instead of just batting for people who ride cars with red beacons on them.
(Interlude-to try to understand what the electricity scam is about, please read this and appreciate what some of us are asking for - the right to introduce checks and balances by way of audits into the privatisation of power distribution in Delhi at the hands of DISCOMs. And take a close look at what is the way the Government of the last decade takes a stand on this demand, which we hope shall now be reversed. )
http://delhigovt.nic.in/rti/appellate/view_appeal_details_admn.asp?aa_code=209&appeal_id=16
Sugarcane grown as a single crop was never the reality of the Gangetic belt but over the past few years, courtesy a mix of demand from the sugar industry feeding further upriver, that's what happened. For a commodity as useless as refined sugar, most of it destined to the soft drink and sweetened foodstuff industry, low prices were essential. Which is why two litres of cancer cola in plastic bottles costs less than 1 kilo of most vegetables and fruits.
Yes, fill your stomachs with cancer colas, and then hang around outside hospitals they can ill afford, sleeping rough, as it gets colder. But move on before the perception managers spot you, can't let the myth that is Delhi's wonderful growth be battered - but have you been to some of the urban villages called "laal dora" in Delhim lately?
That, also, is what rampant farming for sugarcane has done. Which, it has been reported, is going to be the next target area now that the Dooabs have been ruined? I am told Guntur and vicinity, where there are still some canals left, will be the next to receive this blight.
Here, in North india, there is no money to pay for the sugarcane, how much jaggery can the market absorb, and the fields are going to take some time before they can be prepared for vegetables and other cash crops which require 30-60 day turnaround. While sugarcane, lazy man's crop that requires a lot of indentured labout (polite name for bonded labour or slave) has caused economic blight of a sort not seen for a long time in one of the most fertile lands in the world.
Something really needs to be done about the sugarcane problem facing India - before it destroys more of us across all levels. Making cancer colas more expensive by way of tax and price mechanisms to control consumption may be one method.
The sooner the better.
Because we can't blame everything on climate change.
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