Mirror Truth is it?

A group of 4000 farmers (so called) with no shoes and worn out clothes were protesting on the dusty streets of Delhi and urging the GOVT of India to distribute some land to them, and this was picked up by the western media and even prominent indian dailies to potray as yet another sign of unbalanced growth and neo-capitalism in India.  Wondeful thought :)

I am not surprised by the western media, ots journalists are probably so used to potraying India has 3rd world that they love the scantily clad undernourished homeless pictures you can find in any damn indian town...well its just their job.

But I have a question, lets say the GOVT does give some land to the poor, I mean lets assume 2 acres each, and believe me an exaggerating, because you can not realistically give more than this much land to such a large group. Now these people get the land , so how do they sow seeds? They take loans from bank at some rate of interest and some would go to the local money lender, anyways this mean debt?? right?? Again, the average size of a family in india is 6 , so lets be realistiic here...can we make these guys self sufficient  by giving them 2 acres of land?? I mean is 2 acres of land , who knows of what amount of fertility, enough to feed 6 stomachs twice a day and save soem money for the dreams of house car and health?? No way, i do not belive this works at all. Half of them would sell it to some rich landlord in less then 3 months and the rest would go worser in debt! Land reforms in such small size are not the remedy. we need to push for community farming and even encourage coorporate farmimg. Thats the only way forward. Give a stake to the farmer in the land, but he need not just be doing farming all year round. We need to move people our of farming and give them opportunities else where. We can do it, considering we need lot of unskilled labour for the infrastructure india is putting up. Some training would help.

I think homeless and poor exist in all countries, east or west....well india has large numbers, but then if things were all rosy in usa, atleast someone should have told me that i could go to downtown detroit anytime without any fear, or say walk on the streets of Harlem in NY or chicago without concern.....

Lets hope we do not fall for the subsidy and socialist traps again!!