Letters: Fix the purpose of the cess

The government's decision to impose Krishi Kalyan cess on services in order to help agriculture and farmers is welcome, although it has been met with ambivalence across the country.

The nomenclature of the cess is interesting. Kalyan means improvement or welfare. How does the government plan to effect this amelioration? Is it through the perpetuation of the agri-chemicals plus hybrids/genetically modified organism (GMO) model or the natural plus bio-diverse farming method? The problem arises if the choice is the first one.

The Green Revolution was a liability to the very field it sought to benefit - through destructive ingredients in pesticides, fertilisers, fossil-fuel-dependent tractors and worst of all, resource-intensive, especially water, hybrids and later GM seeds. The farmer, who was supposed to be shown the sustainable way forward by learned authorities, like the agricultural ministers and bureaucrats, was pushed into a disastrous paradigm without properly assessing its ill-effects. The result? Devastation of soil fertility, depletion and poisoning of groundwater, a cancer epidemic in Punjab, suicides of close to 300,00 farmers.

To gloss over this colossal ruin by harping on "increased productivity" would be laughable. All the country got were monocultures of wheat and rice -the polished grains of which were given to the public, further depriving them of nutrients - at the cost of neglect to pulses, oilseeds and rain-fed millets.

Why should I, as a taxpayer, finance such an ecologically and socio-economically baneful set-up? I would be satisfied only if my tax contribution is used to help build the humus, water-retention capacity and fertility of soils; give assured and healthy yields; make the farmer self-sufficient through the use of 100 per cent organic and renewable inputs on which he need not incur debts.

The government should enunciate the areas in which the cess will be spent so that it would be known whether the backbone of the nation's economy is being holistically mended or just administered palliatives.

C V Krishna Manoj, Hyderabad

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