December 23, 2020

Respecting Our Farmers

Video courtesy: Gulmohar Doodles

My phone notified me in the morning that it was Farmer’s Day today. 23rd December is National Farmers’ Day, or Kisan Diwas and is celebrated across the country to honour India’s farmers and mark the birth anniversary of the nation’s fifth prime minister, Choudhary Charan Singh. I was bewildered. “Don’t we need such a notification in our actual lives too?”, I asked my partner. “We seriously need to understand and celebrate our farmers as they are the reason we are alive. They feed us when they barely have anything to eat themselves. We should be obliged to them and do everything possible to uplift them in our society. We have to teach our younger generations that no being a farmer is not something to look down upon. It has to be a respected profession just like being a Doctor or an Engineer. The nation need to awake and start realizing that they need to give back to the farmers what they truly deserve!”

Photo courtesy: Gulmohar Doodles

I grew up in a family where 80% of my family members were involved in farming. They could be having an alternative job at an office but what they really loved doing was being amongst the nature, farming and growing their own produce. As a kid, every Sunday it was a ritual to get up around 6 AM and come and work in our small field till afternoon with my other cousins, sisters and other family members. A ritual which we never missed. It was ingrained in our minds right from childhood that we must love the soil. The soil which nurtures us like a mother. It demands very little but gives in abundance if you love her immensely. We learnt to dig and make our hands dirty in the soil. Played with earthworms and learnt it’s importance. Raised cattles and danced in cowdung making cowdung cakes. We were taught how to make our own organic fertilizer and how to use it for growing a healthy crop.

Photo courtesy: Gulmohar Doodles

In all these process, we learnt that it is not easy getting food on our plate. It needs hard work, patience and dedication. It needs toiling, sweating and sometimes even crying! It needs preservance keeping in mind that the other person might not even see what all you bore to get that one hand full of rice which was thrown in a haste out of the window! My parents and my FIL both have a tinkle in their eyes and show their fields with immense pride and love. They are “The Proud Farmers”.

Photo courtesy: Gulmohar Doodles

Today when I see farmers fighting and being treated for their basic rights I feel that somehow over the course of time we forgot our roots. We forgot that any country needs their farmers as much as they need a doctor, engineer or any other profession. We might not need a doctor or an engineer but we need a farmer three times a day! Let’s start respecting the farmers and give them the respect they deserve! Let’s teach our kids what humanity really needs. Let’s not just say “Jai Jawaan, Jai Kisaan” but actually mean it!

Photo courtesy: Gulmohar Doodles