Recently the Prime Minister of India inaugurated India’s
first integrated food park in the Tumkur region of the southern Indian state of
Karnataka as a public-private sector partnership between the Government of India
and big retail giants.
The 110 acre food park is in itself the first of its
kind in the whole nation and can be termed as a new innovation for India. The
part will cater to the needs of farmers, food manufacturers and retailers and
would surely commence a new epoch for the food processing industry of India.
It goes without saying that India is one of the greatest
food baskets of the whole world and also the leading manufacturer and exporter
of various types of food grains, fruits and vegetables but till now the
potential of Indian farmers has never been mobilized to the hilt because of
lack of vision and proper approach to the situation. The farmers of India, who
carry out the toughest in the nation, remained impotent leading to huge
degradation of the country’s agricultural and food processing power. In a
country where 60% of the population depends on agriculture directly and
indirectly was made to see the heart rending suicides of farmers. In the year
2012 only, the National Crime Records Bureau reported death of 13,754 farmers
through suicide. This is truly a shameful thing for us.
In states of Haryana and Punjab, agriculture is the
most abundant and prevalent occupation and many other states too have a
plethora of farmers but till now no one has been able to understand the plight.
Farmers work hard day and night to produce various agricultural products, puts
on stake everything he has in hand but still gets such a low pay for his
produce but paradoxically retailers sell the same to the consumers at
exorbitant prices. How is this happening
puts a big question mark on the policies that have been adopted by out
governments.
The main reason behind such thing is the lacunae in
the transportation process of agriculture produce from farmers to retailers or
from farmers to manufacturers.
Farmers produce the agriculture product but due to
their impoverished conditions they are not able to transport the same to the
retailers directly and thus comes the role of middleman. The middleman in this
case buys things from farmers at a very low rate due to their illiteracy and
unawareness of the market price and then takes the same to the cities and sell
them at incredibly high rates. For example, potatoes in Punjab are sold to
middleman through farmers at a rate of Rs. 8 and the retailers sell them to
consumers at the rate of Rs. 40-50. This leads to complete recession of the
farmer’s condition leading to circumstances which even force him to suicide.
The same happen with manufacturing industries.
Industries too buy produce from farmers at a low rate, then package the food
and sell it at very high rate again transferring all the loss to the shoulders
of the farmers.
But the new food park can definitely help which
accommodates for the transportation of food products from the field of the
farmer to the plate of the consumer giving equal chance to the farmer as well
as the manufacturers and transporters to soar their business up, thereby
promoting equitable distribution of resources and I believe that this plan of
Modi government can lead to huge investment as well as progress in this sector.
Jai Hind, Jai
Bharat
Jai Ma Bharti
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