In this week we saw our honorable agriculture minister Dr Damodar Rout writing two articles in a sequence which was published in the edit page of the Samaj. Coming from an agriculture minister, presumably we expected something on agriculture. And there was no dearth of current issues and topics to discuss on agriculture. Looming threat of severe and widespread drought condition, sudden spurt of farmer suicides etc deserve headlines and editorial spaces in newspapers and news channels.
But Dr Rout proved us horribly wrong. His two articles had nothing to do with agriculture... the word 'agriculture' or 'farmer' did not even crop in either of the two articles. Both articles tried to advocate how essential big industries are for our development; how forests have to be felled to make way for mining; how barren lands are being described as forest; how government officers converted barren lands as forest from their desks; how water have to be given to the industries etc. The writings carried the stamp of an advocate heavily paid by his clients to strongly present their cases. And his writings made it amply clear who his clients were - Vedanta and Posco.
Its a pity that our own agriculture minister does not believe that agriculture can bring development to the state. This is ludicrous and pathetic. On one hand we continue to say that our agriculture potentials are severely underutilised and thus the scope for improvement and growth are enormous. But on the other hand our agriculture minister believes that there is no future in agriculture. The minister sheds no tear when a farmer poisons him/herself. But when his pet clients get jolts, he hurriedly devotes all his time to give interviews to channels and pen articles for editorial pages.
Time to think whether we will be better off without an agriculture minister like him. We have no objection if he is made minister for mines or industries. Then he can write pages and pages and hold hour long briefs for his clients. But Dr Rout presently being an agriculture minister, we cannot probably be that tolerant to his recent talks, writings and actions.
Dr Rout flaunts his 'farmer background' to justify his qualifications for the present post, i.e., of an agriculture minister . We thank him for being a farmer at some point in his past. But we hope that he will stick to that identity and work to make agriculture the chief vehicle of our state's development.
Dear Bimal babu, you are right. Our agriculture minister is thinking less of agriculture and more of industries. We have to strongly critical of such duality.
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