The caboose roars in India over rezoning from Gap to Core

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: “India’s Bet on Industry Sows Violence: Farmers Object to Plan to Forgo Agriculture for Economic Zones; Fights With Police Turn Deadly,” by Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2007, p. A6.

Fascinating and clear example of caboose braking:

Deadly battles this week between protesters and police on a planned industrial-development site have brought into sharp relief a major problem in India’s economic boom: As local governments bet on industry rather than agriculture to deliver expansion, many farmers fear they will be left behind.

No comment necessary.

Comments

[Bill Millan]

As a Nation industrializes, they need fewer farmers. But the ones they have are politically powerful and are being subsidized.Sound Familar?

[Kim McD]

For those of us who respect and listen to the limits of our biology, comment is necessary. With all that we know now about soil biology, there may be approaches where the engine could be agriculture. Here in the core, chemical bloom and bust has had its say and its day. We are suffering from this toot which we have indulged for some time. Our soils are up and blowing off, our biggest export over and above anything we make, including debt, our most denied vice.

Some farmers will be left behind, ones who are addicted to the chemical fix, the gov't subsidy. Send in the SysAdmin with simple tools to help make food really sustain us, as well as boom and bust those who have to have that excitement. Commerce is already there with cell phones for better markets.