Topic 4

Part of transcription from Nero’s Guests (P. Sainath: Inequality and India’s Agrarian Crisis)- https://vimeo.com/22060541-:

Here the fastest growing media in the world... a politically free media but imprisoned by profit.

Lakme india fashion week was functioning in Mumbai and you have 512 correspondents covering the event. After the fashion week, that year, the girls were displaying cotton garments in Mumbai. One hours flight away, in Vidharbha, the men and women who grew that cotton is suiciding at a rate of 6-8 each day.

What is the Agararian crisis? 5 words, the drive towards corporate farming; How this Agrarian crisis become operationalised? 5 words, predatory commercialisation of the country-side; What did it achieve? The biggest displacement in Indian history.

What you have done in the period of last 20 years, is to reduce every form of human values to exchange value. So what are you doing? It's not profitable so they shouldn't be in agriculture.

In the last 15 years, the fastest growing sector in this country is not IT, it is not software, it is Inequality. It has grown faster than at any time in our history since the time of the colonial raj.