[Applause]
may 1st ask each one of you to pick up
if you can one of those cash students
kept on a table and enjoy it while
you’re munching it please understand
that you are part of the 1% of the
richest most privileged people in India
very very few people have ever eaten a
cashew nut in their lives in this
country there would be a few millions in
India who’ve not had breakfast
I stand here exactly 220 years after the
famous economist Thomas Malthus
propounded his theory which he published
as the classical theory of population in
which he scared the whole world in 1798
same food production is going to grow in
arithmetic proportion meaning to tons
this year 3 tons next year photons the
year after that
but population is going to grow in
geometric property progression meaning 2
4 8 16 32 and he predicted that in a
hundred years humanity would stop to
depth but we are here two hundred and
twenty years later and munching cashew
nuts of course we should give it to him
be lenient to him because he could not
have foreseen the technological changes
over the next two centuries maybe we
would have things from GM foods to
fertigation and all kinds of farm
technology I also stand here before you
exactly 75 years after the Great Famine
of 1943 when two million people perished
in Bengal Bengal in the British India
four years before any parents had a
population of sixty million two million
of them died in one year because it was
a famine some people would like to blame
Winston Churchill for poor
but it was also a fact that those many
people died because India’s agriculture
from those days has been very marginal
people were actually more peasants than
farmers and so it was a tragedy waiting
hundreds of thousands of college
students like many of you in this room
pass from college around the world not
just in India still believing that
poverty has a lot to do with shortage of
food but the reality is quite different
let me just invite your attention to
three or four crops and their production
and you know what a bizarre situation we
have in India’s rice production has been
about 85 to 90 million tonnes right
until about 2010 and then there was a
spot better technologies probably went
better subsidies played a part better
irrigation infrastructure better crop
varieties subsidies everything together
rice production suddenly jumped 100
million tons and we’ve stayed above that
level ever since and this year we may
touch a production of asahi’s 130
million tonnes and our demand has been
flat at about 19 so we have so much rice
in this country we cannot sell it
anywhere we cannot sell it anywhere
we’re trying to export it to Bangladesh
because Bangladesh had a storm last year
and they lost their rice crop but we can
do that for a year after that they will
recover we are trying to export it to
poorer countries only yesterday the
Nigerian information minister said we
will not be importing any rice from any
country because we self-sufficient in
2019 so this is the last year that we’ll
be importing rice if you look at wheat
we have a similar problem of surplus we
used to produce about 74 million tons
every year in 2012 that suddenly jumped
to 95 million and today we are close to
100 million tonnes and our consumption
is also about 100 million tonnes which
means we are breakeven there if you
produce more wheat you will be in
trouble if you put rice and beet are our
surplus problems just consider sugarcane
it is such a gigantic problem for this
country we produce so much sugarcane
nobody wants it nobody wants it
this year our sugarcane production is
going to jump 49 percent and touch 31
million tonnes the Government of India
is faced with this huge problem that
they have removed all export herbs
anybody can export sugarcane and sugar
and they have instructed mills to
necessarily export 2 million tonnes of
sugar but where do we export that nobody
wants it today sugar mills in India Oh
17,000 crore rupees to farmers that’s a
hundred and seventy billion rupees if we
consider our 31 million tonnes of sugar
is as big just consider Brazil that
country produces that’s the largest
producer of sugar in the world five
hundred and eighty five million tonnes
and they’re trying to sell it everywhere
again very few people want it but Brazil
always used to switch between you know
from the sugar cane farmers they would
procure that some of that they would
convert into sugar for consumption and
the rest they would convert into ethanol
to use as automobile fuel unfortunately
petroleum prices have dipped and so
ethanol is not as attractive as it used
to be so now Brazil is 50/50 on sugar
and ethanol India is planning to get
into ethanol but perhaps it may do a
little bit well in better in India
because our petroleum prices are still
kept by the government artificially but
does not much begin to with sugar this
is sugar Mountain that India’s dealing
with and you all know that sugar is also
the biggest killer on earth and it kills
more people every year around the world
than al-qaeda Taliban is is Boko Haram
and all the fringe terrorist groups put
together type it is India is the world’s
diabetes capital
and Kerala is India’s diabetes capital
so with me one freedom in 1947 we were
only four years away from that great
Bengal famine of 1943 so we can forgive
our leaders for emphasizing so much on
food production in those years in 1947
we had 330 million people to feed
because short of food so we put all our
emphasis or agriculture 70 years later
we still doing that
unfortunately the times have changed
there is a food rut there is a food rut
in this country we don’t know what to do
with our rice we don’t know what a wheat
we don’t know what we the were sugarcane
we don’t know what to do with many other
things and so much production despite
climate change the water table dropping
further Lee of soil declining farmers
being in debt crisis despite all that if
this is the mountain of food that we are
growing there is a tragedy awaiting us
around the corner and that tragedy
unfortunately is that we continue to
have 55% of our population and we have
the second largest populated country 55%
are still in agriculture you will
understand how shocking this is if you
compare the numbers of some of the
countries because every country starts
as an agrarian society and then moves on
to industry and then graduates to
service a sector in 1960 percent of all
Americans were in farming after 100
years in 2000 there were only 2 percent
in farming and those 2 percent were
producing enough for actually the whole
world
they were restraining their production
so that prices would not fall further in
India we are 70 years down the line we
still have 55 percent in agriculture if
you consider the real number of people
55 percent of 1.3 billion which is a
population that is 715 million people
they need to go out they need to move
out but who will break this
heartbreaking news to them political
leaders are not going to do that because
they’re a huge wood bank it is
heartbreaking anyway to tell anybody
that you’ve lost your profession this
profession doesn’t exist it’s just like
when a bridge comes across a river the
boat man who was working there would
definitely be losing his job you can’t
go and pacify him saying you improve
your boat you give meta services while
you deserve coffee on the way nothing
will save him that profession is gone
forever even 15 years ago when we drove
on India’s roads we could see people
painting boats
coatings were hand painted by people
there would have been hundreds and
thousands of people doing that across
all streets but today the Flex boats
have come all of them have been wiped
out most industries the old-world
industries have been wiped out or at
least disrupted drastically in India we
do not like to touch some areas where we
are so emotionally attached that even a
mention of them would would cause
friction for example we respect our
soldiers so much we respect our farmers
so much I believe that both jobs are
imperative we are not going to have
soldiers in any country for long most of
you sitting in this hall are from an
engineering background and you would
understand that human soldiers are not
going to fight battles for very long the
same applies for farmers 3% of a
nation’s population can produce enough
food for a whole society a whole nation
even for the whole world we cannot have
55 percent people working I’ll just give
you a sartorial representation of what’s
I’m sure you’ve heard of ballot and
India India actually today is two
one is bad and the other polished suave
Western looking english-speaking is the
India so we have Bharat and India within
one country and this marital is so
deprived of everything this is the fifty
five percent the farming community they
do not have anything you don’t have a
board of Weber bar to see farmers
committing suicide or being in such
distress seven hundred meters from this
hall you will find the local co-op early
farmers cooperative every Monday if you
go there on a Monday morning at 8 a.m.
you’ll find banana farmers bringing
their crop there’s nobody to buy them
for months and they go on growing it
hoping that next season the great price
my friend promote who cultivated tapioca
last year
he’s just harvested he doesn’t get a
pipe from some eight months of work
because tapioca sells for on wholesale
for less than ten rupees and that’s not
a good return for eight months of work
so we find everything loaded against
this unfortunately this 54% only
contributes 15% to our economy while
industry and services contribute much
more so we actually need to break this
bad news it is painful the Bible says
good friends hurt you by talking the
truth to you bad friends shower you with
kisses farmers are being showered with
kisses 40% farmers marched from Nasik to
mumbai 180 kilometers last month and the
Mumbai Chief Minister Devendra Fatima
stole them
don’t worry I’ll write up your loans
please go back and all the poor farmers
walk back they’ll form again
next year they’ll be in a crisis again
300,000 farmers have committed suicide
in India over two decades and none of
them has thought of changing their jobs
how shocking how will this awareness
reach them who’s going to break this bad
news to them but true news to them who’s
going to tell it I think this is an
excellent platform to say that even if
many people cannot digest it the farmers
and the rural India is in such distress
that I could not make I’m a son of the
soil of Copely I could not make a
presentation for this talk because for
the last 48 hours
there was no papa at home because of a
storm two days ago and the lumber trees
fell all over the place so he broke the
powerlines and I don’t have that is
rural India that my dear friends is the
life of seven hundred and fifty million
people who actually formed 10% of the
world’s population the biggest
structural job change is going to happen
through these people when they shift
their jobs they need to shift out if you
heard three hundred thousand IT
professionals have committed suicide in
the last 20 years would anybody go to an
engineering college to study that nobody
would nobody would but you hear that
300,000 farmers committed suicide and
the children continue to do that
hoping that next year tapioca prices may
improve next year wheat prices next year
rice prices in negative sugarcane price
something improve they’re going to
decline long time long term because
technology keeps improving we do not
need 55% people there Pope Francis
called them the neglected people of the
world farmers Donald Trump call them
before gotten people whatever you call
them what is the the situation facing us
is that we need to shift so many people
out and we need to actually where
agriculture like this it should be an
adornment for us we need this much of
our economy it’s 15 percent not 55
percent and if we have this ship people
out a strong and healthy economy
actually needs people to move out of
sectors that do not contribute so much
if there is we have an efficient
agriculture sector we actually will be
releasing millions of people to industry
in fact for a healthy economy to survive
a strong agriculture efficient
agriculture sector is in fact a
precondition so we need to do that over
the next five ten as early as possible
or we are facing a calamity we’ve not
seen before and if you look back at what
the is the price that we paid to reach
this situation maybe have excess of
everything that is even more painful we
have actually sunk borewells everywhere
we have played havoc with our water
tables the European Commission estimates
there are 20 million water tables that
have been sunk in India more than
anywhere else in the world and if you
keep on doing that and with all the
pesticides that we’ve used in our in our
farms that means you know we’ve achieved
all this surplus yet it is not reaching
the people because who are the consumers
the consumers are again the farmers they
have no latent demand they do not have
the money to buy this there is a
consumption only when their people can
buy it only if farmers are able to move
out move up and those of us who are
sitting in this room I would say some
people need to move out of agriculture
the remaining people need to move up in
their skills and technology and policy
makers and those who id8 like all of us
sitting here we need to meditate on it
move out move up and meditate and I hope
this country will pick up we’ve got the
determination always Jai jawan Jai Kisan
yes Jake
son but far more efficient far fewer
cousins I leave you with that thought
thank you [Applause]
may 1st ask each one of you to pick up
if you can one of those cash students
kept on a table and enjoy it while
you’re munching it please understand
that you are part of the 1% of the
richest most privileged people in India
very very few people have ever eaten a
cashew nut in their lives in this
country there would be a few millions in
India who’ve not had breakfast
I stand here exactly 220 years after the
famous economist Thomas Malthus
propounded his theory which he published
as the classical theory of population in
which he scared the whole world in 1798
same food production is going to grow in
arithmetic proportion meaning to tons
this year 3 tons next year photons the
year after that
but population is going to grow in
geometric property progression meaning 2
4 8 16 32 and he predicted that in a
hundred years humanity would stop to
depth but we are here two hundred and
twenty years later and munching cashew
nuts of course we should give it to him
be lenient to him because he could not
have foreseen the technological changes
over the next two centuries maybe we
would have things from GM foods to
fertigation and all kinds of farm
technology I also stand here before you
exactly 75 years after the Great Famine
of 1943 when two million people perished
in Bengal Bengal in the British India
four years before any parents had a
population of sixty million two million
of them died in one year because it was
a famine some people would like to blame
Winston Churchill for poor
but it was also a fact that those many
people died because India’s agriculture
from those days has been very marginal
people were actually more peasants than
farmers and so it was a tragedy waiting
hundreds of thousands of college
students like many of you in this room
pass from college around the world not
just in India still believing that
poverty has a lot to do with shortage of
food but the reality is quite different
let me just invite your attention to
three or four crops and their production
and you know what a bizarre situation we
have in India’s rice production has been
about 85 to 90 million tonnes right
until about 2010 and then there was a
spot better technologies probably went
better subsidies played a part better
irrigation infrastructure better crop
varieties subsidies everything together
rice production suddenly jumped 100
million tons and we’ve stayed above that
level ever since and this year we may
touch a production of asahi’s 130
million tonnes and our demand has been
flat at about 19 so we have so much rice
in this country we cannot sell it
anywhere we cannot sell it anywhere
we’re trying to export it to Bangladesh
because Bangladesh had a storm last year
and they lost their rice crop but we can
do that for a year after that they will
recover we are trying to export it to
poorer countries only yesterday the
Nigerian information minister said we
will not be importing any rice from any
country because we self-sufficient in
2019 so this is the last year that we’ll
be importing rice if you look at wheat
we have a similar problem of surplus we
used to produce about 74 million tons
every year in 2012 that suddenly jumped
to 95 million and today we are close to
100 million tonnes and our consumption
is also about 100 million tonnes which
means we are breakeven there if you
produce more wheat you will be in
trouble if you put rice and beet are our
surplus problems just consider sugarcane
it is such a gigantic problem for this
country we produce so much sugarcane
nobody wants it nobody wants it
this year our sugarcane production is
going to jump 49 percent and touch 31
million tonnes the Government of India
is faced with this huge problem that
they have removed all export herbs
anybody can export sugarcane and sugar
and they have instructed mills to
necessarily export 2 million tonnes of
sugar but where do we export that nobody
wants it today sugar mills in India Oh
17,000 crore rupees to farmers that’s a
hundred and seventy billion rupees if we
consider our 31 million tonnes of sugar
is as big just consider Brazil that
country produces that’s the largest
producer of sugar in the world five
hundred and eighty five million tonnes
and they’re trying to sell it everywhere
again very few people want it but Brazil
always used to switch between you know
from the sugar cane farmers they would
procure that some of that they would
convert into sugar for consumption and
the rest they would convert into ethanol
to use as automobile fuel unfortunately
petroleum prices have dipped and so
ethanol is not as attractive as it used
to be so now Brazil is 50/50 on sugar
and ethanol India is planning to get
into ethanol but perhaps it may do a
little bit well in better in India
because our petroleum prices are still
kept by the government artificially but
does not much begin to with sugar this
is sugar Mountain that India’s dealing
with and you all know that sugar is also
the biggest killer on earth and it kills
more people every year around the world
than al-qaeda Taliban is is Boko Haram
and all the fringe terrorist groups put
together type it is India is the world’s
diabetes capital
and Kerala is India’s diabetes capital
so with me one freedom in 1947 we were
only four years away from that great
Bengal famine of 1943 so we can forgive
our leaders for emphasizing so much on
food production in those years in 1947
we had 330 million people to feed
because short of food so we put all our
emphasis or agriculture 70 years later
we still doing that
unfortunately the times have changed
there is a food rut there is a food rut
in this country we don’t know what to do
with our rice we don’t know what a wheat
we don’t know what we the were sugarcane
we don’t know what to do with many other
things and so much production despite
climate change the water table dropping
further Lee of soil declining farmers
being in debt crisis despite all that if
this is the mountain of food that we are
growing there is a tragedy awaiting us
around the corner and that tragedy
unfortunately is that we continue to
have 55% of our population and we have
the second largest populated country 55%
are still in agriculture you will
understand how shocking this is if you
compare the numbers of some of the
countries because every country starts
as an agrarian society and then moves on
to industry and then graduates to
service a sector in 1960 percent of all
Americans were in farming after 100
years in 2000 there were only 2 percent
in farming and those 2 percent were
producing enough for actually the whole
world
they were restraining their production
so that prices would not fall further in
India we are 70 years down the line we
still have 55 percent in agriculture if
you consider the real number of people
55 percent of 1.3 billion which is a
population that is 715 million people
they need to go out they need to move
out but who will break this
heartbreaking news to them political
leaders are not going to do that because
they’re a huge wood bank it is
heartbreaking anyway to tell anybody
that you’ve lost your profession this
profession doesn’t exist it’s just like
when a bridge comes across a river the
boat man who was working there would
definitely be losing his job you can’t
go and pacify him saying you improve
your boat you give meta services while
you deserve coffee on the way nothing
will save him that profession is gone
forever even 15 years ago when we drove
on India’s roads we could see people
painting boats
coatings were hand painted by people
there would have been hundreds and
thousands of people doing that across
all streets but today the Flex boats
have come all of them have been wiped
out most industries the old-world
industries have been wiped out or at
least disrupted drastically in India we
do not like to touch some areas where we
are so emotionally attached that even a
mention of them would would cause
friction for example we respect our
soldiers so much we respect our farmers
so much I believe that both jobs are
imperative we are not going to have
soldiers in any country for long most of
you sitting in this hall are from an
engineering background and you would
understand that human soldiers are not
going to fight battles for very long the
same applies for farmers 3% of a
nation’s population can produce enough
food for a whole society a whole nation
even for the whole world we cannot have
55 percent people working I’ll just give
you a sartorial representation of what’s
I’m sure you’ve heard of ballot and
India India actually today is two
one is bad and the other polished suave
Western looking english-speaking is the
India so we have Bharat and India within
one country and this marital is so
deprived of everything this is the fifty
five percent the farming community they
do not have anything you don’t have a
board of Weber bar to see farmers
committing suicide or being in such
distress seven hundred meters from this
hall you will find the local co-op early
farmers cooperative every Monday if you
go there on a Monday morning at 8 a.m.
you’ll find banana farmers bringing
their crop there’s nobody to buy them
for months and they go on growing it
hoping that next season the great price
my friend promote who cultivated tapioca
last year
he’s just harvested he doesn’t get a
pipe from some eight months of work
because tapioca sells for on wholesale
for less than ten rupees and that’s not
a good return for eight months of work
so we find everything loaded against
this unfortunately this 54% only
contributes 15% to our economy while
industry and services contribute much
more so we actually need to break this
bad news it is painful the Bible says
good friends hurt you by talking the
truth to you bad friends shower you with
kisses farmers are being showered with
kisses 40% farmers marched from Nasik to
mumbai 180 kilometers last month and the
Mumbai Chief Minister Devendra Fatima
stole them
don’t worry I’ll write up your loans
please go back and all the poor farmers
walk back they’ll form again
next year they’ll be in a crisis again
300,000 farmers have committed suicide
in India over two decades and none of
them has thought of changing their jobs
how shocking how will this awareness
reach them who’s going to break this bad
news to them but true news to them who’s
going to tell it I think this is an
excellent platform to say that even if
many people cannot digest it the farmers
and the rural India is in such distress
that I could not make I’m a son of the
soil of Copely I could not make a
presentation for this talk because for
the last 48 hours
there was no papa at home because of a
storm two days ago and the lumber trees
fell all over the place so he broke the
powerlines and I don’t have that is
rural India that my dear friends is the
life of seven hundred and fifty million
people who actually formed 10% of the
world’s population the biggest
structural job change is going to happen
through these people when they shift
their jobs they need to shift out if you
heard three hundred thousand IT
professionals have committed suicide in
the last 20 years would anybody go to an
engineering college to study that nobody
would nobody would but you hear that
300,000 farmers committed suicide and
the children continue to do that
hoping that next year tapioca prices may
improve next year wheat prices next year
rice prices in negative sugarcane price
something improve they’re going to
decline long time long term because
technology keeps improving we do not
need 55% people there Pope Francis
called them the neglected people of the
world farmers Donald Trump call them
before gotten people whatever you call
them what is the the situation facing us
is that we need to shift so many people
out and we need to actually where
agriculture like this it should be an
adornment for us we need this much of
our economy it’s 15 percent not 55
percent and if we have this ship people
out a strong and healthy economy
actually needs people to move out of
sectors that do not contribute so much
if there is we have an efficient
agriculture sector we actually will be
releasing millions of people to industry
in fact for a healthy economy to survive
a strong agriculture efficient
agriculture sector is in fact a
precondition so we need to do that over
the next five ten as early as possible
or we are facing a calamity we’ve not
seen before and if you look back at what
the is the price that we paid to reach
this situation maybe have excess of
everything that is even more painful we
have actually sunk borewells everywhere
we have played havoc with our water
tables the European Commission estimates
there are 20 million water tables that
have been sunk in India more than
anywhere else in the world and if you
keep on doing that and with all the
pesticides that we’ve used in our in our
farms that means you know we’ve achieved
all this surplus yet it is not reaching
the people because who are the consumers
the consumers are again the farmers they
have no latent demand they do not have
the money to buy this there is a
consumption only when their people can
buy it only if farmers are able to move
out move up and those of us who are
sitting in this room I would say some
people need to move out of agriculture
the remaining people need to move up in
their skills and technology and policy
makers and those who id8 like all of us
sitting here we need to meditate on it
move out move up and meditate and I hope
this country will pick up we’ve got the
determination always Jai jawan Jai Kisan
yes Jake
son but far more efficient far fewer
cousins I leave you with that thought
thank you [Applause]
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