GILLIAN LUCKY

Bib­li­cal scrip­ture states that for every­thing there is a sea­son-a time to sow and a time to reap. And with no in­ten­tion to blas­pheme or of­fend, as the verse would ap­ply in our coun­try-a time to bull­doze once no­tices have been served. The re­cent act of wan­ton de­struc­tion of crops is un­for­giv­able al­though we have just moved from a time when for­give­ness is sup­posed to be fore­most in our minds. Com­men­da­tion must be giv­en to the Prime Min­is­ter who, based on re­ports of the in­ci­dent, quick­ly sent an in­struc­tion from over­seas to im­me­di­ate­ly stop the crop de­struc­tion. Per­haps there is some truth in the state­ment that when the cat is away, the mice will play and in this case, run amok in the cul­ti­vat­ed fields. At least it will not be dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the iden­ti­ty of the chief mouse or mer­ry mice in­volved and I am con­fi­dent that some tails may be chopped. How de­press­ing and em­bar­rass­ing it must be for the Prime Min­is­ter to be en­gag­ing in talks in Brazil that in­clude boost­ing our lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor when, ap­par­ent­ly with­out her knowl­edge and ap­proval, crops were be­ing bull­dozed away and farm­ers were scam­per­ing to the courts for in­ter­im pro­tec­tion. Of course the farm­ers may have no prob­lem if of­fered gold­en pack­ages of com­pen­sa­tion and are re­lo­cat­ed, but how do we en­sure that such a trav­es­ty to moth­er earth does not re­cur?

No re­spect

There is no deny­ing that the elec­tion man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship en­ti­tled "Pros­per­i­ty For All Man­i­festo 2010" is a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment that out­lines the plans and ini­tia­tives to be im­ple­ment­ed in ma­jor sec­tors in or­der to achieve sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Stat­ed bold­ly in the man­i­festo are six pil­lars of de­vel­op­ment for agri­cul­ture and the first reads: "Re­spect for agri­cul­ture, the farm­ers and the land." Ob­vi­ous­ly the ac­tion which forms the sub­ject mat­ter of the com­plaint runs con­trary to this ex­pressed pol­i­cy and so there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty from those who is­sued the in­struc­tion. What makes it worse is that there has al­so been a gross de­par­ture from some of the key ini­tia­tives stat­ed in the food pro­duc­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty man­i­festo pol­i­cy in­clud­ing promis­es to "in­tro­duce a na­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al land in­ven­to­ry sys­tem which doc­u­ments all al­lo­ca­tions by the State; ef­fect a na­tion­al land use pol­i­cy that spec­i­fies and pro­tects land to be used ex­clu­sive­ly for agri­cul­ture; and to reg­u­larise 'squat­ter farm lands' on the ba­sis of co­op­er­a­tive ef­fort." Per­haps this un­for­tu­nate event will jump­start the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the stat­ed poli­cies so that we do not have to re­live such a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

Back in time

Over the last year Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has proven that he is ca­pa­ble of re­viv­ing, up­grad­ing and ad­vanc­ing an in­dus­try that was lit­er­al­ly put to pas­ture and ne­glect­ed over the decades. Over the past few months I have lis­tened to Min­is­ter Bharath ex­plain the ini­tia­tives that have been and will be in­tro­duced to re­sus­ci­tate the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and it is clear that good things are hap­pen­ing. In fact, this min­is­ter is cor­rect­ly rat­ed as one who is ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient in the per­for­mance of his man­date. How­ev­er, the in­ci­dent with the bull­doz­ing of more than 50 acres of crops in D'Abadie is re­port­ed to have tak­en Min­is­ter Bharath by sur­prise, rais­ing yet an­oth­er is­sue that there is a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween min­istries on mat­ters of mu­tu­al con­cern.

Un­doubt­ed­ly Min­is­ter Bharath was re­mind­ed of his days in the op­po­si­tion as the mem­ber for St Au­gus­tine when res­i­dents of Spring Vil­lage squared off with se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials at­tached to the HDC af­ter they were pre­vent­ed from en­ter­ing farm lands in the area. Back then in May 2008, those farm­ers claimed that plans were afoot to bull­doze 50 acres of land in the area to put up hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. What was worse is that one week be­fore, trac­tors had bull­dozed five acres of farm lands, de­stroy­ing crops that were al­most ready for har­vest­ing. MP Bharath, as he was then, con­demned the "op­pres­sive, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and vis­cous de­struc­tion of farm­ers' lands at Spring Vil­lage." Now the poor min­is­ter, hav­ing made strides in a short space of time to boost food pro­duc­tion, finds him­self hav­ing to ex­tend olive branch­es, ex­tin­guish fires and pub­licly ad­mit that he had no knowl­edge of the act in D'Abadie which di­rect­ly touch­es and con­cerns his port­fo­lio.

Which came first

There is no chick­en and egg sto­ry when it comes to food and shel­ter. Both are ba­sic ameni­ties and pro­vi­sion must be made for cit­i­zens in need of ei­ther or both re­sources. The Prime Min­is­ter has ex­plained that while she un­der­stands the ur­gent need to de­liv­er hous­ing to cit­i­zens, "there must be equal con­sid­er­a­tion to the long-stand­ing tenure of prac­tice con­duct­ed by farm­ers in cer­tain ar­eas."

Ad­mit­ted­ly a bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise must be con­duct­ed when con­front­ed with com­pet­ing needs that both re­quire im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion and so it would have cost lit­tle or noth­ing to have de­layed the bull­doz­ing, al­lowed the crops to reach full ma­tu­ri­ty for har­vest­ing and, in the in­ter­im, an at­tempt could have been made to re­solve the mat­ter, with lit­i­ga­tion in court be­ing a last re­sort. In­stead, it is pre­dict­ed that be­cause of the de­struc­tion of the crops, food prices will con­tin­ue to rise and cit­i­zens will be dis­cour­aged from look­ing to farm­ing as a means of vi­able in­come. And again, the ac­tion is con­trary to the man­i­festo pol­i­cy on hous­ing which promis­es "to be based on the de­vel­op­ment of homes, fam­i­lies and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties and will be aligned to an over­all land use pol­i­cy."

Thanks to farm­ers

How many of us take the work of our farm­ers for grant­ed and show no grat­i­tude for the role they play in our na­tion's sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment? The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor has al­ways been treat­ed with scorn yet those who op­er­ate in this in­dus­try com­prise some of the most tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple in our so­ci­ety. We have to treat our farm­ers with re­spect and stop jump­ing on the band­wag­on for per­son­al or po­lit­i­cal gain. We can on­ly hope that out of this "bad" will cometh good.