Towards home and wife to tell the sickening news
Luxury and comfort a distant impossible ask
Survival and continuance a big question mark
The monsoons fail as in the preceding four years
Spurious seed and scantly sourced precious waters
His crop this year was meager reduced in quality
Middlemen like fine sieves waiting copiously
Value for produce never matches the effort
Farmer the last in line when the talk is profit
Never gains filter down to him who toils the soil
His life is drudgery with many waiting to foil
Benefits for hard-slog for blood sweat and tears
Snatched from him before his mouth it reaches
Lenders like hawks watch every movement
Ready to scoop-out any morsel money scent
A land of billions with deaths in thousands
Population and illiteracy perpetual scars
Haves and have-nots, the divide growing
Death here longed-for by many suffering
Hide and hole up a choice no longer available
Verdict pointing to only one direction feasible
End the torture from all encircled, humiliating
Whole family form pact to end misery alarming
Gulp down pesticide obtainable effortlessly
To never suffer from a plight, saved eternally
Such is the dilemma of farmers countless
In the land India, here death goes heedless
(15th June, 2006, Nellore)
© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved.
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3 COMMENTS:
awesum poetry again..The plight of Indian farmers is pathetic..In every country farmers are present but in India they suffer from lot of turmoil..Moreover in our country monsoon is the only option to trust..Hope the plight of these pitiful farmers change..good poetry..keep up the good work..:)
You picturise the Malady of Indian Farmers very nicely!
I am an aquaculture consultant and have seen lives being destroyed...this is to my client, the farmer
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