Mahatma
Gandhi advised us to have control over excess wants and unnecessary desires.
The aberrations of the society are getting more visible in terms of class,
caste, creed, discrimination, deprivation, poverty, hunger, violence, chaos,
and calamities. Written by Dr. A.K. Jasu1
Greek philosopher
Aristotle said,”Man is born free but he is everywhere in chain – chain of
caste, creed, language, culture, ignorance and poverty. Poverty can be taken to
be the greatest chain”. Human beings have to get rid of these chains otherwise
they cannot feel and enjoy freedom which is the ultimate goal of human
development.
The root cause of
hunger and poverty in the society is due to excessive wants, desires and greed
of the rich people. Rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer. This
raises a serious concern particularly on the skewed developmental approach by
our policy makers in favour of economic development vis-à-vis social
advancement without realising its adverse effect on the society at large. It is
money, money and more money and it is power, more power and absolute power all
the way especially in developing countries. It seems there is no end to our
desires and wants. Mahatma Gandhi advised us to have control over excess wants
and unnecessary desires. The aberrations of the society are getting more
visible in terms of class, caste, creed, discrimination, deprivation, poverty,
hunger, violence, chaos, and calamities. Societies are disintegrating in every
developmental process, there should be a healthy and congenial atmosphere for
its execution and in implementation. The
good plants are grown on a conducive ambience. Likewise diffusion of
technologies, may that be agriculture, industry or any other, would take place
on the foundation of conducive social order. We want accelerated promotion of
science and technology in the societies which are suffering from many social
ailments and maladies – suspicion, distrust, selfishness and least respect for
the poor and the peace. Therefore our approach to development should be to
prepare the rural and urban societies socially
conducive, united, and receptive and rich- a good and effective ground
for absorption of technologies for sustained development rather than wishing
miracles to happen in an unconducive social order. This is a deeper and
emergence issue which we have to understand and work together for the total
development in general and agricultural development in particular. Our approach
should be holistic in nature and integration of all the facets of development.
One should not view in one’s perspective- like blind sees the elephant.
The fact is that about
40% of the rural population still remain below the poverty line despite
remarkable increase in production and productivity due to Green Revolution.
Many studies revealed that the inequalities have been directly proportionate to
the growth of output in agriculture. For this reason it is imperative that
agricultural scientists should have continuous dialogue with social scientists
for identifying causal relationship of technology adoption and for developing
strategy for reinvestment in agriculture. The benefits of good agricultural
extension system have long been recognised, yet so often extension service in
developing countries like India has failed to meet the expectations. It is
perhaps high time to critically review the agricultural extension system in
order to develop a programme relevant for the country’s situation.
Conventional
farm research has focused mainly on productivity while the key aspects of
farming system- the agro ecological, environment and socio-cultural goals are
overlooked leading to mismatching of technology and local concern. Achieving
national food security through higher productivity is a major goal, but social
security for the poor who are socio-economically backward cannot be ignored to
meet the ends of justice and equity. Farmers decide the mix of enterprise and
technologies depending on the environment, social and cultural goal,
constraints, skills and resources at their command. Research for small and
marginal farmers in constrained environment, therefore needs an approach based
on understanding of the farming system and how they fit into the socio-economic
and agro ecological environment. Here
lies the emergence and importance of sociology in agriculture. It is high time
that all the stakeholders of development including government policymakers,
Agricultural scientists, Social scientists and NGOs should develop a
methodology to work together for the betterment of agriculture and society at
large.
Illustration- Atanu Deb
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