Western UP will remain indebted to Dr Bakshi Ram for Co 0238: Balyan

Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Dr Sanjeev Balyan, who graced the Rural Voice Agriculture Conclave and NACOF Awards 2022, noted that Rural Voice was started on December 23, the birthday of Ch. Charan Singh, the greatest farmer leader in the country.

So, “we can remember Chaudhary Saheb and while doing so, Rural Voice will also come to our mind. Just as Ch. Charan Singh cannot be separated from farmers, similarly Rural Voice, too, can’t be separated from them.”

“It often seems,” said Balyan, that Charan Singh “couldn’t get much of an opportunity.” He became Chief Minister twice and also the Prime Minister, but he had short stints. In his time, Balyan felt, “leaders did not represent their castes, but their profession. Perhaps there has been no farmer leader after that. Leaders have got pigeonholed in their castes.”

Balyan congratulated the farmers and Harvir Singh, Editor-in-Chief, Rural Voice on its completion of two years.

“There are very few who earn so much respect in journalism. There are many journalists in Delhi, but Harvir ji is a person whom everyone trusts. And this trust runs across (political) parties. This is because he remains distant from politics and always talks about farmers in spite of living in Delhi.

Referring to his own sojourn in Delhi for about nine years, Balyan said, “Truly speaking, I have often felt Delhi to be surrounded by fake farmers. In Delhi, you can often hear such people talking about farmers as have never been to fields.”

When Balyan became Union Minister of State for Agriculture in 2014, he asked for a list of farmer leaders with a desire to meet them. Now, he is an MP from Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh (UP), a region known for its farmers’ movement and farmer leaders. Besides, he has been educated in Haryana, where also he was familiar with farmer leaders. “When I got the list, I found there were no farmer leaders of the ground level.”

In such a different atmosphere of Delhi, Balyan found it to Harvir Singh’s credit that “Rural Voice came in” and that Singh worked “constantly as a link between the fields and the farmers and the government.”

Balyan congratulated IFFCO and its Managing Director Dr US Awathi for the great achievement that Nano Urea is. And now that Dr Awasthi has talked about Nano DAP, Nano Potash, Nano NPK, etc. in the pipeline, there are expectations galore.

Talking about the Co 0238 variety of sugarcane, Balyan acknowledged the debt that western UP owed to the great scientist Dr Bakshi Ram. “The variety he gave us increased recovery by 2 per cent, benefiting the sugar mills, and increased cane production to about 1.5 times, benefiting the farmers. Thus, it became the first such variety that pleased both farmers and sugar mills.”

“Unfortunately, however, the variety contracted a disease,” said Balyan. “And there has been no replacement for it so far. One wonders how long it will take.”

It has begun to appear that technology can benefit farmers, said Balyan. However, he expressed concern that scientists were now confined to their laboratories. “Ever since students from rural backgrounds are going to agricultural institutes in fewer numbers, the filial bond between the scientists and the farmers has somewhat weakened. Publishing papers has become the foremost priority in our institutes.”

A group of farmers from different states presented thier recommendations to Dr Balyan

Balyan also took a dig at the role of the media. “When I became the Minister,” he narrated, “farmers had arrears of about Rs 25,000 crore and sugar was priced at Rs 22 per kg. This was in 2014. A committee was made and we increased the import duty on raw sugar to 25 per cent (today it is 100 per cent).

“As soon as Ram Vilas Paswan ji and I made this announcement on that day, sugar price went up from Rs 22 to Rs 24. And I still remember the Aaj Tak line that followed: ‘Modi sarkaar ne chai bhi kadwi kar dee (Modi Govt makes even tea bitter)’.”

Balyan concluded that as long as this attitude of raising an uproar on even the slightest price rise of food items continued even as a blind eye was turned to inflation in other commodities, farmers would be besieged by politics.