 Media Credit: Grant Gutierrez Hemalatha Mekala, electrical engineering student, takes a moment of silence Tuesday for the farmers of India.
|
|
A group of Indian students and members of the Baton Rouge community came together Tuesday night with a mission in mind - to support a nationwide vigil that could lead to lowering suicide rates among distressed farmers in their homeland.
The intimate setting of the International Cultural Center set the tone for the participants to discuss and propose solutions for the sensitive economic issue that has resulted in the more than 100,000 farmer suicides in India in the last decade. The suicides attracted national attention to what critics call lack of government intervention to protect farmers from faulty business practices.
Initiatives spurred by the Association for India's Development, a nonprofit organization and volunteer movement geared toward promoting sustainable economic development in India, has fueled the fire among people nationwide to participate in the vigil.
AID members in India and in more than 35 U.S. locations, including Baton Rouge, all took Tuesday to observe the dire situation in India.
Somu Kumar, a member of AID's Maryland chapter, pulled most of the strings to encourage chapters nationwide to participate in the vigil.
Kumar said the vigils have been held in India, but this is the "first time" in the U.S.
Srikanth Jandhyala, treasurer for the Baton Rouge chapter and computer science doctoral student, said the chapter only found out about the national event a few days ago, but he felt the Indian community in Baton Rouge could not miss participating in "such a meaningful movement."
"Even though we never knew about it weeks back, I felt we could still do something," he said, adding that he sent mass e-mails to Indian students and members of the Baton Rouge community to get them involved.
Suicides have become a prevalent issue among Indian farmers who were in debt because of what many believe to be a result of the farmers' inability to keep pace with their competition after the business shifted to a global market.
A few years ago farmers also traded in their using organic farming practices for patented hybrid seeds that were supposed to yield bigger crops. But many farmers have seen no such luck.
Many advocacy groups believe the change has driven many farmers into poverty because of lack of government policies to secure farmers' investments in a business that has become too expensive for the farmers to make a profit.
Suicide rates reported by Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a nonviolent Indian farmer advocacy group, showed that more than 800 farmers in Vidarbha, located in northeastern Maharashatra - a state in India- committed suicide in September.
Kumar said the vigil is one of the many types of nonviolent protests AID has incorporated in its six-year campaign to garner support and attention for the distressed farmers.
"There is a really stark reality that we have to do something, or we are going to have a big problem," Kumar said. "There are a lot of people from India that are here and don't know what's going on. They don't see the harsh reality of the situation."
Kumar said the shift from government involvement to government apathy more than 20 years ago has also been a major factor in the increased economic stress for farmers, which has increased the numbers of suicides.
"There used to be a very close, hand-to-hand relationship with the government," Kumar said, adding that farmers have now been expected to support themselves without government intervention.
Several of the vigil participants blamed the dire circumstances and suicides on the government, saying that awareness about the business practices that work against the farmers should start "from the top level and moved deep down into the rest of the society."
But some participants disagreed.
Bharat Eapi, a member of AID's Baton Rouge chapter and Southern University student, said that change is something that requires everyone's commitment.
"The government needs to do it, and every individual needs to do it," Eapi said. "But every individual is not going to do it."
AID is sponsoring a nationwide petition urging the government to take action and create laws, relief measures and pro-farmer policies to "increase access to food and livelihood security for farmers and the poor." The support document will be submitted by e-mail to India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
Phani Surya Kiran Mylavarapu, president the Baton Rouge AID chapter, said he hopes the petition is not one of the many things the government ignores.
"The minute the subject box says 'agrigarian crisis,' it might be a matter of delete, crash and it's gone," Myalvarapu said. "And that is not good practice. We hope that does not happen."
----
Contact Garesia Randle at grandle@lsureveille.com
