Demand for special Parliament session on water, farm crises

A strong demand was today made for convening a special Parliament session on water and farm crises at a Delhi Assembly event here attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia.
Author-journalist P Sainath rued that the MS Swaminathan Commission report on farmers was gathering dust for the past 10 years without any discussion on its recommendations as he pitched for a Parliament session to discuss water and farm crises.
He made the comments while delivering the inaugural talk as part of the Delhi Assembly Lecture Series on the topic 'Water and Farm Crisis in India'.
His demand was supported by Aam Aadmi Party MLAs including Somnath Bharti and Alka Lamba, who urged Kejriwal to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard.

Speaking on the occasion, Speaker Ram Niwas Goel claimed the BJP government at the Centre was "fudging" data to report a reduction in the number of farmer suicides by hyphenating between tenant farmers and agricultural labourers.
Underlining the link between "mega water crisis" and farm crisis through a power present presentation, Sainath told the AAP legislators that the problems had more to do with lopsided policies and priorities than meteorological factors. "Even three consecutive good monsoons will not help us tide over it."

BJP lawmakers, including the Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta, were not present at the lecture.
"The Swaminathan Commission report is lying in the Parliament for 10 years without even a discussion. There should be a session, at least 10-day-long on water and farm crises. Secondly, agriculture should be declared a public service," Sainath said.

The National Commission on Farmers (NCF) was constituted on November 18, 2004 under the chairmanship of Professor M S Swaminathan, which submitted its final report October 4, 2006.
Highlighting rapid rise in inequality in India, Sainath claimed that top one per cent of Indians own 53 per cent of total wealth of the country while "top 0.2 per cent own 41.4 per cent of total wealth."
The Magsaysay award winner journalist, also the author of 'Everybody loves a Good Drought', said the water crisis in regions such as Maharashtra's Marathwada was due to rampant concretisation around river source areas and subsequent dying up of streams.

"Three cities in Maharashtra - Mumbai, Thane and Pune - get around 53 per cent of the state's drinking water. On top of that you have apartments coming up in Mumbai with as many as 210 swimming pools in one of them," Sainath said.
He said the distress in the agricultural sector was also due to credit crisis where agri-businesses corner a large share of credit meant for agriculture and "exploding input costs".