German women aid given to Vidarbha farm widows :
Pandharkawada (India), March 17:
Today in very largely attended public function (see photo)to give German women aid to vidarbha farm widows held in small town pandharkawada in yavatmal district of vidarbha(India) in which most venerable widows who are facing starvation have given the relief aid .the function was orgnised by pandharkawada civic body president anil tiwari in local agrasen bhavan was attended by all social and political workers of all parties.
Kumar Roy and Shibani Bhattacharya Indian counter part of Indienhilfe e.V., a voluntary organisation based in Herrsching, have disbursed the amount.
Courageous and spirited stories told by widows, publicly, to keep the life alive was main attraction of the function.
This time, the helping hand has come from across the oceans, from Germany, for the distressed widows of farmers in Vidarbha, the region of Maharashtra in the grip of a severe agrarian crisis.
The readers of a Munich-based daily sent in financial contributions for helping women after reading about their plight in a series of stories carried by the newspaper.
The amount representing the total collection is to be handed over to the women at a brief function to be held in Pandharkawda in this district on Saturday.
Karin Steinberger, a correspondent of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a leading German newspaper, toured Vidarbha in December 2006 for a closer look at the agrarian crisis and the plight of the widows of debt-ridden farmers, who committed suicide.
Moved by Ms. Steinberger's articles, several readers remitted money to the newspaper's office, asking it to be sent to the widows. The total collection was the equivalent of Rs1. 5 lakhs.
However, the money could not be sent to India directly because of legal restrictions on remittance of foreign exchange, until Indienhilfe e.V., a voluntary organisation based in Herrsching, stepped in.
Kishor Tiwari, local farm activist of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti was the chief guest of the this function and urged all farm widows to change the agrarian crisis in to prosperity whole world is with, we will appeal the all international community to stand along with you in this days of distress. No widows have become sex worker till date and it will not happen in future too.
Vidarbha farm widows are the highly respected like war widows in this maharashtra ,we condemn the media campaign to malign the image of vidarbha farm widows as turning be sex workers, Kishor Tiwari informed gathering with grate pain.
However some sections of Indian media are bent on attracting sensational headlines, doing investigative journalism, looking for spicy headlines, without any compassion.
This section of media is choosing to put farm widows in the dock rather than the agriculture policy makers.
Showing posts with label farmers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farmers. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
German Women Join Hands With Vidarbha Widows
The readers of a leading German ( Deutsche )news paper, "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" have given relief aid to Vidarbha Farm Widows.
They were moved by Karin Steinberger's article based on the struggle of farm widows, after the suicide of their farmer husbands, when local Maharashtra govt. turned blind eye towards the plights of these widows.
This amount was collected by news paper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" was transferred to INDENHILFE, an NGO working for the Indian people.
Their Kolkatta base office is arranging a function for Relief Aid disbursement at Pandharkawada in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha, Maharashtra in India on 17th March. INDIENHILIFE office in charge, Kumar Roy and Shibani Bhattacharya have been touring in rural part of Vidarbha to identify the widows who are working hard to save the surviving family, from agrarian crisis.
Karin Steinberger, is with the German news paper, "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" since 2000, writing features from all over the world, but most of stories are from rural parts of India. This article was based on the hardships faced by Farm Widows of Vidarbha and their "struggle to remain live", without any meaningful and coordinated government aid.
It was published in 2006, and the article has been read by the thousand of readers in Germany, but relief aid programme, has just coincidently matched with the timing when one of Indian media, TV news channels, has been running a premeditated campaign, to run fabricated stories of Farm widows and has been evoking very strong response from Vidarbha and all over the world.
This German relief aid distribution programme, will boost morale of these farm widows, at last, after the sheer apathy of local Congress and NCP government, and top local bureaucrats of Maharashtra, who are more interested in book keeping and making media statements, debating the reasons for farm suicides in cotton belt of Vidarbha.
They were moved by Karin Steinberger's article based on the struggle of farm widows, after the suicide of their farmer husbands, when local Maharashtra govt. turned blind eye towards the plights of these widows.
This amount was collected by news paper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" was transferred to INDENHILFE, an NGO working for the Indian people.
Their Kolkatta base office is arranging a function for Relief Aid disbursement at Pandharkawada in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha, Maharashtra in India on 17th March. INDIENHILIFE office in charge, Kumar Roy and Shibani Bhattacharya have been touring in rural part of Vidarbha to identify the widows who are working hard to save the surviving family, from agrarian crisis.
Karin Steinberger, is with the German news paper, "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" since 2000, writing features from all over the world, but most of stories are from rural parts of India. This article was based on the hardships faced by Farm Widows of Vidarbha and their "struggle to remain live", without any meaningful and coordinated government aid.
It was published in 2006, and the article has been read by the thousand of readers in Germany, but relief aid programme, has just coincidently matched with the timing when one of Indian media, TV news channels, has been running a premeditated campaign, to run fabricated stories of Farm widows and has been evoking very strong response from Vidarbha and all over the world.
This German relief aid distribution programme, will boost morale of these farm widows, at last, after the sheer apathy of local Congress and NCP government, and top local bureaucrats of Maharashtra, who are more interested in book keeping and making media statements, debating the reasons for farm suicides in cotton belt of Vidarbha.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Daughters of Vidarbha
Daughters of Vidarbha - Whose responsibility ?
While India Makes Record Cotton Exports to United States of America. Who is benefiting from WTO ?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Chidambaram Eyes For Sensex Only
It seems Shri Chidambaram, Indian Finance Minister, has made up his mind.
He and the Congress, have no time for even listening to the complaints of the suicidal cotton farmers of Vidarbha, much less, addressing the issue of the siphoning of agricultural surplus from Indian villages.
Now the question is whether this neglect of Indian farmers by the central Congress government, will have any political impact on the image, of Shrimati Sonia Gandhi amongst rural voters or not. In the short run it certainly will not. The mood of the voters shows that she is still considered the rahanuma of the Indian villages.
Kishor Tiwari of Vidarbha JanAndolan Samiti is returning empty handed to Vidarbha after not even being considered for a meeting with Shri Chidambaram. Apparently, Shri Chidambaram is busier attracting European pension funds to invest in Indian stock markets rather than responding to the mental health of farmers in the cotton belts of India.
He does have a point too though. After all India needs to emulate China in a very short time and this is the economic model being vigourously pursued by the Oxbridge economists in charge of economic policy making. Moreover, he feels he really does not have any role to play in addressing the situation of Indian farmers and the rising debt levels.
Yes, of course, when Shri Sharad Pawar is looking after the Agriculture Ministry and taking care of the sugar farmers, why should Shri Chidambaram feel the need to open his mouth. His remit is the IRS bureaucracy, the stock markets and providing funds for 6 lanes highways to run from the southern ports to the rural hinterland in the north. He has to merely point out the figures of investment in rural infrastructure and leave the rest to Shri Pawar to take care of.
Shri Sharad Pawar is of course busy trying to reconcile the impossible conflict, in his dual role as Agriculture Minister of India and seeing if Indian farmers are able to sell their produce in the market, and buying food for urban consumers in southern India at the cheapest prices, in his role as a Food Minister of India. He surely has a tough job and when one considers that he also has the unenviable tasks of justifying the high levels of pesticides in the milk that Indian mothers have to feed to their children, and backing the return to form of Saurav Ganguly in Indian cricket, one cannot but feel that such immense responsibilities are being thrust at him. How will he cope with all of these roles ?
At least someone must rise to the ocassion and come to the rescue of Shri Sharad Pawar as he juggles between his various important roles in the central government.
And who else will it be if not the suicidal farmers of Vidarbha ?
Maybe the farmers of Vidarbha, have to repay many debts of past lives, to Shri Sharad Pawar and they have to do it in this lifetime.
So who is going to foot the electoral bill in the next elections ? Yes this will surely begin to cause sleepless nights for some of the people in Congress circles who are well connected with the rural mood.
He and the Congress, have no time for even listening to the complaints of the suicidal cotton farmers of Vidarbha, much less, addressing the issue of the siphoning of agricultural surplus from Indian villages.
Now the question is whether this neglect of Indian farmers by the central Congress government, will have any political impact on the image, of Shrimati Sonia Gandhi amongst rural voters or not. In the short run it certainly will not. The mood of the voters shows that she is still considered the rahanuma of the Indian villages.
Kishor Tiwari of Vidarbha JanAndolan Samiti is returning empty handed to Vidarbha after not even being considered for a meeting with Shri Chidambaram. Apparently, Shri Chidambaram is busier attracting European pension funds to invest in Indian stock markets rather than responding to the mental health of farmers in the cotton belts of India.
He does have a point too though. After all India needs to emulate China in a very short time and this is the economic model being vigourously pursued by the Oxbridge economists in charge of economic policy making. Moreover, he feels he really does not have any role to play in addressing the situation of Indian farmers and the rising debt levels.
Yes, of course, when Shri Sharad Pawar is looking after the Agriculture Ministry and taking care of the sugar farmers, why should Shri Chidambaram feel the need to open his mouth. His remit is the IRS bureaucracy, the stock markets and providing funds for 6 lanes highways to run from the southern ports to the rural hinterland in the north. He has to merely point out the figures of investment in rural infrastructure and leave the rest to Shri Pawar to take care of.
Shri Sharad Pawar is of course busy trying to reconcile the impossible conflict, in his dual role as Agriculture Minister of India and seeing if Indian farmers are able to sell their produce in the market, and buying food for urban consumers in southern India at the cheapest prices, in his role as a Food Minister of India. He surely has a tough job and when one considers that he also has the unenviable tasks of justifying the high levels of pesticides in the milk that Indian mothers have to feed to their children, and backing the return to form of Saurav Ganguly in Indian cricket, one cannot but feel that such immense responsibilities are being thrust at him. How will he cope with all of these roles ?
At least someone must rise to the ocassion and come to the rescue of Shri Sharad Pawar as he juggles between his various important roles in the central government.
And who else will it be if not the suicidal farmers of Vidarbha ?
Maybe the farmers of Vidarbha, have to repay many debts of past lives, to Shri Sharad Pawar and they have to do it in this lifetime.
So who is going to foot the electoral bill in the next elections ? Yes this will surely begin to cause sleepless nights for some of the people in Congress circles who are well connected with the rural mood.
Why Zubani ? Indian rural narratives of women
The idea for this blog came up in the course of some discussions regarding what women - the wives and the daughters - of the farmers, who are committing suicides, in the cotton belt of India of Vidarbha, Maharashtra, are thinking.
Priya of Samanvaya, Chennai has been involved with a campaign of email updates regarding the farmer suicides in Maharashtra.
In the course of the discussions, we wondered, that if and when, the dust of arguments, rhetoric, politics settles down, who is facing the world with blank uncomprehending eyes ?
No proud farmer of rural India deliberately wants to be a delinquent debtor. No Indian farmer wants to die without repaying all his accumulated debts.
However he has been pushed into disasters due to a failure of economic policy.
The Indian economic policies with respect to agriculture, are nothing other than a disguised exit policy and a tool for sucking surplus for subsidizing industry.
For large masses of Indian farming populations, the present and the future is bleak.
Even though India is a democracy, the Indian farmer, and rural populations, fail to find a voice in policy making, as New Delhi and Mumbai, pursue a course of economic restructuring of epic proportions, driven by the desire to benefit from globalization and the need to respond to the threat from China, US, Europe.
Large scale economic restructuring is unleashing large social displacement and rural distress.
The farmer of course - the husbands and the fathers - who committed suicide by drinking a can of pesticides, and was able to manage to relieve himself of the mental burden of financial debt and the daily verbal torture of debtors, and money lenders.
But it is the rural women of India who are unable to comprehend that Indian economic policies are making agriculture unviable for the farmer who is solely dependant on rural incomes.
It is these women of India, reduced to a sorry state, from divine Shakthi and the Rani of Jhansi invocations, who are left alone in the wake of these powerful market forces and economic policies of Indian urban led growth policies without social security.
It is the women, the daughters and the wives, who will pay the price of the debacle of Indian farming and disguised exit policy.
This is an attempt to collect some of the rural narratives of some such women, the powerless Shakthi, who does not have the power to slap the errant people in the face, as shown in the TV soaps, that are the staple of Indian middle class and upper classes, solely preoccupied by the return to form of Saurav Ganguly, the get rich quick questions of Shah Rukh Khan and the unending rise of the Indian sensex.
Priya of Samanvaya, Chennai has been involved with a campaign of email updates regarding the farmer suicides in Maharashtra.
In the course of the discussions, we wondered, that if and when, the dust of arguments, rhetoric, politics settles down, who is facing the world with blank uncomprehending eyes ?
No proud farmer of rural India deliberately wants to be a delinquent debtor. No Indian farmer wants to die without repaying all his accumulated debts.
However he has been pushed into disasters due to a failure of economic policy.
The Indian economic policies with respect to agriculture, are nothing other than a disguised exit policy and a tool for sucking surplus for subsidizing industry.
For large masses of Indian farming populations, the present and the future is bleak.
Even though India is a democracy, the Indian farmer, and rural populations, fail to find a voice in policy making, as New Delhi and Mumbai, pursue a course of economic restructuring of epic proportions, driven by the desire to benefit from globalization and the need to respond to the threat from China, US, Europe.
Large scale economic restructuring is unleashing large social displacement and rural distress.
The farmer of course - the husbands and the fathers - who committed suicide by drinking a can of pesticides, and was able to manage to relieve himself of the mental burden of financial debt and the daily verbal torture of debtors, and money lenders.
But it is the rural women of India who are unable to comprehend that Indian economic policies are making agriculture unviable for the farmer who is solely dependant on rural incomes.
It is these women of India, reduced to a sorry state, from divine Shakthi and the Rani of Jhansi invocations, who are left alone in the wake of these powerful market forces and economic policies of Indian urban led growth policies without social security.
It is the women, the daughters and the wives, who will pay the price of the debacle of Indian farming and disguised exit policy.
This is an attempt to collect some of the rural narratives of some such women, the powerless Shakthi, who does not have the power to slap the errant people in the face, as shown in the TV soaps, that are the staple of Indian middle class and upper classes, solely preoccupied by the return to form of Saurav Ganguly, the get rich quick questions of Shah Rukh Khan and the unending rise of the Indian sensex.
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