'Farmers Protests'.
the bitter truth, probably -
(COPIED from a friend's wall)
I am still not clear about the issues involved in the Farmer's agitation. So, I asked a friend of mine, who besides engineering is a farmer from Abohar - Fazilka region of Punjab.
Now, after retirement, he is a full-time farmer.
This is what he told me.
"I have been actively farming for almost two decades now and I have witnessed many things happen at APMC’s.
I have seen classifications of C grade grain miraculously change into B grade grain.
Similarly, I've also witnessed the weighbridge weigh in the empty truck at 39 tons & the full truck at 55 tons and later found that the unloaded truck weighed 43 tons at another weighbridge.
Yes I know, you know what I know. Yet let me tell you more abt what you may already know.
There are over 30,000 registered adtiyas in Punjab.
These 30,000 employ another 300,000 sub-agents or sidekicks or people who wouldn’t have made it into doing anything anyplace were it not for the patronage network of these 30,000. There are only 1500 farming villages in Punjab.
330,000 / 1500 is about 220 people on average per village doing the work of middlemen.
Why is this the case?
It’s a long story but someone needs to begin talking about this at some time.
We had a food shortage and a ship to mouth existence until the 1970s.