Dear PARIvar,
Sainath will broadcast live on YouTube on Sunday, 11th June 2017 at 7:00 pm IST.
From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra now out on the streets in protest, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?
Share this link with as many people as possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyyvcP6MuoA
You may also watch the live stream on this page.
Sainath talks about how loan waivers and many other policies are temporary reliefs and not solutions. He has constantly mentioned about ‘transformation’. What could be the transformation that he is talking about? Where do they begin from? How can someone part of an urban society/culture be part of such a transformation or initiate one or contribute to it?
I have grappled with these questions myself. I find that there are many ways we as urban residents can ensure that the rights of rural India are not trampled – or at least not trampled out of sight of the awareness of the country. This is by subscribing to various sources of information to keep an eye out for things that could do with your endorsement. We all have a voice – big or small and we can use our sphere of influence to awaken people to the issues that need addressing. I do this in various ways. PARI has a Feedburner feed which you can subscribe to as email updates or an RSS Feed. All content on PARI addresses rural realities.
Most other sites don’t have a dedicated feed you can subscribe to for rural content, but you can also create a Google News feed to get regular updates when news on the subject you want to keep an eye on is published. Some of the News alerts I have are “agrarian crisis India”, “regional language India” or “folk arts India” for example. As an urban resident, you cannot contribute content to PARI unless you go to rural India and report from there as per guidelines, but you can send opinion content to this blog – this blog is about building a rural-urban bridge of understanding – of sorts. Where we urban folks too can talk about rural India.
How has BT cotton affected production and prices in India? How has that affected textile (and related) workers?
Thank you Varuni for commenting on our blog.
You will find an extensive coverage on Bt Cotton on People’s Archive of Rural India. Please visit our various stories that talk on Bt Cotton here:
https://ruralindiaonline.org/search/?q=BT+Cotton