Shortage of fertilizer in Karnataka

These days we are bombarded with the issue of “Fertilizer Shortage”  in karnataka. All around we see the media (both print andvisual) as well as numerous blogs writing articles upon articles highlighting government’s  failure in solving this vexed issue.  Both the state’s CM B.S Yaddyurappa and the Home Minister Dr. V. S Acharya have been accused of firing on the farmers and the opposition parties have also called for their resignation . Lately, we are also seeing highly visual suicides by the farmers again linking it to the fertilizer shortage.

However,  no where we see any concerted effort by the media to rationally analyze the whole episode. It looks like every body just gets carried away by the current hysteria, in most cases being generated by the vexed interests.

Lets look into this issue for once keeping aside everything we have seen and read all these days.

First of all, fertilizer in our country is a highly subsidised commodity just like some other items like cooking gas, oil etc. The central government grants subsidies to the chemical industry for producing the required fertilizers that are then distributed to the states.  Individual states then distribute this in the grass root level.

Usually in the month of March and April respective state governments submit their estimated fertilizer requirement to the central government and stock the same before the onset of monsoon rains in June. Since Karnataka being under president’s rule during that period, it should have been the responsibility of the Governor’s administration (say Central Govt) to estimate and stock the required amount of the fertilizers in May. But that never happened. The other contributing factor might be that the agriculture dept employees were drafted for election duty by the EC. As a result as againt an opening stock of 58,516 tons of fertilizer on Apr’2007, the available stock on Apr’2008 was a mere 3412 tons. Added to that, the monsoon rains which usually start around mid June, started 2 weeks early.

This was the scenario when the new BJP government took oath on May’30.  CM Yaddyurappa met PM Manmohan Singh on June 2nd and conveyed him the situation regarding the fertilizer situation and was assured of all the help in time. Since the CM had decided not take any administrative decisions (possible because of the bad experience the last time around)  concentrated his efforts on gaining vote of confidence which he won a week later on June 06, cabinet ministers were sworn in on June’08 and portfolio allocated on June’10.

The reason for mentioning this fact is that we all need to have a clear picture of the events that unfurled in the early days of this govt. Usually they say that every new Govt will have an honeymoon period of 6 months to an year. That’s when we can actually start judging the performance of the government based on the policies implemented,  the developmental works undertaken etc.

However, on June’11 we saw the disturbance in Hubli-Dharwad and that was attributed to farmers protesting shortage of fertilizers. 3 buses were burnt, shops were stoned, public properties were damaged.  Police resorted to lathi charge to quell the disturbance.

The next day, in haveri, it was reported that farmers were again agitating demanding fertilizers and the police fired on the agitating farmers. All the opposition parties, news outlet and the print media painted the govt with recklessly firing on Innocent farmers.

Lets looks at this for a moment. First of all, since the fertilizers were not supplied from the central Govt, the state govt would have been in no position to supply fertilizers. Now blaming the shortage on a 2 week old state govt  might not be a correct thing to do and the same cannot be said about the previous administration.

Secondly, since when we as a society started approving destruction of public properties as a legitimate form of protest? That line of thinking would definitely lead to chaos in the society. Also, stoning police does no good to anybody. We all should understand that even they are normal persons with family. When cornered, every living being will try to protect itself against the aggressor by all means. Even in this case, we have seen that the law enforcement officers severely out-numbered  by the raging stone pelting so called farmers, used all the traditional means of crowd control.  The phrase “so called farmers” is used because usually in these situation, it is the anti social elements that take advantage of the situation. We have seen the same happen during Dr RajKumar’s funeral procession.  The situation went out of control when people surrounded a KSRP bus with very few constables and started pelting stones. We all should put ourselves in that situation for a moment and think what we might have done. Probably one of the constable fearing for his life must have started shooting resulting in the death of a farmer. Hopefully the judicial enquiry might throw more light on the whole episode.

It is very easy to blame a person or an entity for a particular incident. It is true that the Home ministry is responsible for the law and order situation in the state. However the local administration is directly in charge of such situation. Blaming Home Minister Dr Acharya might be ill advised because he had assumed the charge of the ministry just a couple of days back and I don’t think we can judge somebody’s ability even without giving time to perform.

All opposition parties are blaming the govt for the episode.  A strong apposition is a must for the proper functioning of a democracy. However, even opposition parties like the Congress should introspect their acts while they were in power. There were incidents of firing on farmers when both the principal opposition parties were in power. Everybody should find out the actions being taken back then.

Even the media should introspect its reporting ethics. Some of the news outlets have been towing the opposition line during this incident which is not healthy. Instead, they have to do some honest analysis of the events and persent it to the people. We all know the tipid response of the media when President Bush went to War. Only a couple of years later did the media realise its mistakes.

Even today, we see news about farmers committing suicide.  However there are news that these are being done with an intention of getting govt compensation. Again patience is advocated in reporting such incidents. It is heartening to see at least some of the media outlets are talking and implementing self restraint that is a very healthy development.

As per the latest information, the Central Govt has released only 62,400 tons of the fertilizer as against the promised qty of 1.4 lakh tons by June’20. It is interesting to see how the state govt and the opposition parties will handle the situation arising from this shortage.  The need of the hour is to collectively approach the federal authorities instead of blaming each other.

One sad development that we have seen is that none of the so called farmer leaders nor the opposition leaders have denounced the destructive nature of the protest. In fact some of the statements were supportive of such actions which is very unfortunate.

We hope that this article will give you some more information/ insight about this issue. Now it is left to the individual reader to think rationally and build upon his/her opinion.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this blog and the issues that we highlight. You can leave a comment  or write to us at myrationalthought@gmail.com