Page Text
________________
and urgency of none can be either ignored or minimised. Cattle farming in India's agriculture is it's very heart. Agroiculture, cattle farming and subsidiary industries have to be brought into their own to embrace the nation in peace, prosperity and stability. Gosātas movement plays a very vital role in this direction.
Ironically, these are the truisms & axioms that do not go straight into the heart, only because they are so simple and manifast & mechanisation in agriculture is being rapidly introduced. But as Jaiprakash Narayan observed, "Those people who advocate for mechanised and the so-called scientific methods of farming in India, live in an unreal world, which has nothing to do with the realities of the country."
PILLARS OF STRENGTH India is predominently an agricultural country. However much we rush to be an Industrially developed nation, it should not be forgotten that out of total fourty crore acres of our cultivable land, as much as 60% is cultivated by animal - power 12% by manpower and 28% by machine power. Animal power is used in cultivation, transport, water drawings in fields and similar work. Machanised farming is a distant dream. Majority of our farmers hold only one to two acres of land which can be cultivated only by animal driven ploughs. Still however, if total mechanised farming is planned, it will require atleast sixty three lacs tractors against the existing about five lacs tractors. Thirty crore tone of steel will be needed to produce all these tractors and that too without spare parts required for replacement. Our total production of steel, today, is not above even five crore tons. Total funds required to replace animal power by machine power (Tractors) will be many fold more than Rs. 93,000/- crores.
MECHANISED FARMING : AN IMPOSSIBILITY IN INDIA 62% of India's rural population possess less than half an acre and 70% of the farmers possess land less than two hectores. They cannnot afford to have tractors & allied implements for their farms.
Any forcible amalgamation of their holdings to form viable farms for mechanised farming and there by reducing farmers to a mere wage-earners is simply an impossible task. And farmers nowhere in the world part away with their land voluntarily and cheerfully.
MECHANISED FARMING : UNECONOMIC AND RUINOUS
On account of ever increasing costs of inputs, profits from mechanised farming gets rapidly marginlised, ultimately resulting into net lossess to the farmers. They are thereby forced to abandon farms and rush to the cities. Even in the U.S.A., with all sorts of resources at command, the farmers are meeting the same fate. During the thirty years from 1919 to 1949 which included
52
Arhat Vacana, Oct. 99
| SR No. | 526544 |
| Book Title | Arhat Vachan 1999 10 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Anupam Jain |
| Publisher | Kundkund Gyanpith Indore |
| Publication Year | 1999 |
| Total Pages | 92 |
| Language | Hindi |
| Classification | Magazine, India_Arhat Vachan, & India |
| File Size | 5 MB |