What is wrong with Haryana and Punjab
On a train journey today, from Chandigarh to Delhi and two things strike out... Again and again, relentlessly - like a hammer.
The sheer spread of waste and the sheer expanse of rice guzzling fields for kilometres upon kilometres.
We are in a dry zone, we live in a water scarce region and we hardly get rainfall. Even the Himalayas which supplies water to Punjab is not really a water-rich region. So this view is astonishing. Wide swathes of land covered under pools and pools of water. And this is Haryana that I am passing through now.
What has come over us. Where is the common sense. As a society, it has become a free for all and the winner gets all scenario. Obviously, the incentive provided by the Minimum Support Price matters a lot and the farmer is not only desperate but also thouroughly convinced that crops like rice is the solution, ecology be damned.
Ecology be damned becuase no one seems to care about the land and about water. Where is this water coming from. Atleast, the land adjoining this train track does not look to be dependent upon canals or irrigation. They look like they are totally dependent upon bore-wells and rain water. Rain is zilch here, so bore water it must be.
One does feel in awe of nature that she can provide us so much water in such arid lands, enough to irrigate lakhs of acres but one does feel that nature is being short-changed and this bounty will get exhausted. And if one digs deeper, surely the vailability of ground water has considerably reduced over the years.
Why should I even blame them, planners encourage such behaviour and almost comically cry when these same farmers burn their crop residues in November causing Delhi to cry. It is a round round circle and no one seems interested to break the chain. Everything is so wrong. Trees non-existent, food corporation of India depots in a decrepit condition and then as you enter Karnal, the rice fields give way and a new story starts - that of a sheer absence of a proper waste management system. I try so hard but am not able to get a grip on waht is wrong with us.
The sheer spread of waste and the sheer expanse of rice guzzling fields for kilometres upon kilometres.
We are in a dry zone, we live in a water scarce region and we hardly get rainfall. Even the Himalayas which supplies water to Punjab is not really a water-rich region. So this view is astonishing. Wide swathes of land covered under pools and pools of water. And this is Haryana that I am passing through now.
What has come over us. Where is the common sense. As a society, it has become a free for all and the winner gets all scenario. Obviously, the incentive provided by the Minimum Support Price matters a lot and the farmer is not only desperate but also thouroughly convinced that crops like rice is the solution, ecology be damned.
Ecology be damned becuase no one seems to care about the land and about water. Where is this water coming from. Atleast, the land adjoining this train track does not look to be dependent upon canals or irrigation. They look like they are totally dependent upon bore-wells and rain water. Rain is zilch here, so bore water it must be.
One does feel in awe of nature that she can provide us so much water in such arid lands, enough to irrigate lakhs of acres but one does feel that nature is being short-changed and this bounty will get exhausted. And if one digs deeper, surely the vailability of ground water has considerably reduced over the years.
Why should I even blame them, planners encourage such behaviour and almost comically cry when these same farmers burn their crop residues in November causing Delhi to cry. It is a round round circle and no one seems interested to break the chain. Everything is so wrong. Trees non-existent, food corporation of India depots in a decrepit condition and then as you enter Karnal, the rice fields give way and a new story starts - that of a sheer absence of a proper waste management system. I try so hard but am not able to get a grip on waht is wrong with us.
