 First of all, the agitations are taking place in areas where they have not normally begun in the last decade or two. Usually this kind of unrest in Maharashtra has started out in Vidarbha or Marathwada. This time it's happened in the relatively more prosperous areas of Nashik and western Maharashtra. It's also interesting that whether you look at Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra, both chief ministers began by saying they would not talk to these guys. Fadnavis said that he would only talk to genuine farmers, which is whoever agrees with him. And Shivraj Chavan, now on a fast after eight farmers have died in police firings and in injuries during the agitation, is now on a fast when he could simply take action against those who opened fire and killed so many people. But the trouble begins the morning on the third year of the Modi government, the newspapers are full of advertisements of this government's incredible achievements in agriculture. The same newspapers that carry the advertisements praising the achievements of the government in three years on agriculture, the front pages of those newspapers carry the news of five farmers shot dead in Mansoor in Madhya Pradesh. It's also interesting that when Mr Modi and Mr Jettli announced that they would double farmers incomes by 2022, they started a big chief ministerial, ministerial group to go into this. And the head of that group was Shivraj Chavan of Madhya Pradesh, now on fast. In the last few days, in refusing to speak to the farmers, there were a number of preventive detentions, illegal arrests. I was witness to some of these in Tassgaon area in Sangli and suddenly Mr Fadnavis finds that he can speak to these farmers. Maybe he figured out that the farmers are searching for a genuine CN and he's decided to speak to them. It isn't just about loan and loan, there are far more serious issues. Stifling Indian agriculture, there are far more serious problems. Loan waivers are a tool, they're not a transformation, they're a relief, not an answer. Apparently the Maharashtra chief minister, Mr Fadnavis, will take a delegation of Maharashtra Khissans to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask him to implement his party's manifesto promise, which was implementation of that recommendation, cost of production plus 50%. It was a promise on the BJP's old manifesto. Having made that promise, immediately after coming to power, the government then submits an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India saying this cannot be done. But please, please, please, this is my appeal to you, do not try understanding the agrarian situation through events and episodic situations like the strike in Maharashtra, the Tamil Nadu farmers' event in Delhi or even the firing in Mansour. These are manifestations of the crisis, they are not the crisis. You really want to understand the crisis, try understanding it through their lives, not through bogus figures and numbers. Every government, every one of them allowed corporations to run amok with price gouging. So you're not talking about doubling the farmers' income in five years and that's another bit of a joke because Mr Jetli never clarifies for you whether he means nominal income or real income. The farmers don't seem to be feeling any improvement in their real income nor has there been one because the last three years show you that agriculture related income, not just the farmers but of that sector, have either stagnated or declined marginally. On the other hand, input prices have been relentlessly rising for two decades. So while the costs of cultivation have doubled, trebled, quadrupled, agricultural income and the farmers' income has stagnated. The average income of a farm household, roughly five people, was 6426 rupees a month. So you've got an astonishing skyrocketing, a gouging of the farmer in pricing by business and corporations and you've got a shrinking or stagnant income. The first loan waiver nationally was under Chaudhary Devi Lal for farmers. At about 10,000 rupees was the cutoff point for every farmer and that was in the 1980s. The next one was 2008. For the corporate sector, the government routinely writes of lakhs of crores of rupees every single year from 2006-2007 budget onwards. There used to be an annexure called statement of revenue foregone. The foregone revenue there includes, say, direct corporate income tax. In 2015, that was 73,000, 78,000 crores. Customs exemptions on gold diamonds in jewelry, 73,000 crores, all armed army items. Gold diamonds in jewelry. Having made all these concessions, these are concessions that largely benefit the top 1-5% of the population. In 2015, the amount was 5,34,000 crores for 1%-2% of the population as against the 56,000 crores of 2008 for 40 million families of farmers. The money is there. There was enough money to give Vijay Malia 9,000 crores of public money and he's living in a flat in Mayfair. The question is, who is getting the money? Minister after minister has said, Pranabda has said it, Chidambaram has said it, I don't know how many times. Mr. Jaitley will tell you that we have doubled agricultural credit, we have traveled agricultural credit. Oh, yes, they have. It's just that it doesn't go to the every culturalist. They've doubled farm credit, but not to the farmer. If you look at the loans that small farmers take, below 50,000, below 2 lakhs, Professor Ramakumar of TISS has done some brilliant work on this to show you from RBI data and he and Dr. Palavi Chauhan, showing you that the lower end of the loans have collapsed and loans about 1 crore, loans about 5 crores, loans about 10 crores have exploded. How many peasants do you know who are taking loans of 10 crore and above? Well, I could think of two or three names. I mean, one is Mukesh, the other is Anil, the third is Ramdev, but I'm sure there are many whom you know, there has been within the increase in agricultural credit, a tremendous diversion of credit from that small and marginal farmer to large businesses and corporations. I think it's a very explicit policy drive that you want to reduce. I mean, that you're trying to take people out of agriculture and put them God knows where because you haven't created a single option, a single option in industry. One jobs have been created in the last 25, 30 years to absorb those leaving agriculture. Today the mills are real estate owned by Godrej, Ambani, Statas and others and the peasants arriving from Raigad, Ratnagiri or Taligam or wherever, the options are to become somebody's domestic servant. So one, you are creating a gigantic pool of cheap labor without giving anyone a job. And secondly, of course you are pushing farmers out to the benefit of corporations. The dropout rate of farmers from agriculture is over 2000 per day. Take my home state of Andhra Pradesh, the unified state for which data exists. In 2011, there was a 1.3 million drop in the population of farmers and two columns away, there is a 3.4 million increase, 3.4 million increase in the population of agricultural farmers. So you know where they're going. Not only where farmers are, not only where dispossessed farmers are going, but dispossessed other sections of agrarian society that are dependent on agriculture. Of course they've been pushed up. And you've started these farmers, producers, organizations which are simply going to lead to farmers becoming laborers, serfs, agricultural workers on their own land working for corporations. So unless we're addressing the larger questions of water, of inequality in water use, you're not going to be able to do that. You're not going to be able to even begin to solve your problem. In Maharashtra, which has had a gigantic water crisis, RTIs done by Priyanka Karkutkar in the times of India show you that cities and towns get 400% more water than villages, though the water comes from rural areas, the Takmur drinking water. Most of Mumbai's water comes from five lakes in the Adivasi, basically Adivasi district of Karni, looks for pipe connections in the Adivasi households. You have a very serious mega crisis and a moral crisis, the way we use water, what we are using it for, what kind of cropping we're doing, what kind of agriculture we're doing. Let's have a 10-day parliament session on agriculture. Let's have a 10-day session where we discuss that. What are the things we can do? Can you make agriculture a public service? Can you ensure that there is a decent pension system for people remaining in the lowest wage sector of the economy? So yeah, there are lots of things that have happened elsewhere that can be done, and you have something very good happening in the state of Kerala. One of the least covered in the media is the movement called, women's movement called Kudubashi. I would say this, that this is one of the most positive things happening connected to agriculture that I have seen in 35 years. We could actually be thinking about how we can create Kudubashi's all around the country and in India. The rural ministries, rural departments of seven other states have asked Kudubashi from Assam to Bihar, have asked them to come there and set up similar Kudubashi right movements over there. Every single country invests in its agriculture. Now agriculture is the lowest paid sector. Wages are lowest, incomes are lowest, everything is lowest. So I would see where this country exists, where that economy exists, where agriculture is not supported by the state. My question is, should it be supporting the food production of the Indian people, or should it be supporting corporate profit? Who you give that money to is the question, not whether you will invest money in agriculture.