Debt-ridden Kingfischer Airlines to get a bailout package; indebted farmers are left to die.

Kingfischer Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya is in trouble. His airline awaits an emergency rescue. Kingfischer Airline suffered a loss of Rs 1,027 crore in 2010-11 and has a mounting debt of Rs 7,057.08 crores. With banks reluctant to give more cash to Kingfischer Airlines, Vijay Mallya has turned to the government.

Civil Aviation minister Vayalar Ravi has been quick to make a public pitch to bailout the debt-ridden company. "I will meet the Prime Minister on his return to the country," he told the Indian Express. "I will also talk to the Finance Minister so that some assistance from the lead banks is granted. Closing down the flights affects the travelling public".

Ironically, in the past one month more than a hundred farmers have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, Vidharba and Kerala. All these farmers took the fatal route to escape the humiliation that comes along with mounting indebtedness. According to the National Crime Records Bureau 15,964 farmers committed suicide in 2010 alone. Put together, more than 250,000 farmers have taken their own lives during the past 15 years. Growing indebtedness had pushed them to the brink.

I haven't seen any urgency on the part of the successive governments or the policy planners and mainline economists to provide a bailout package to the beleaguered farmers. I don't understand why the serial death dance in the countryside does not evoke any reaction while all hell breaks loose when a big company goes bankrupt. Aren't the poor farmers human beings? Why is that they don't need even a word of sympathy whereas all aviation experts/planners and economists are making a strong pitch for bailing out a debt-ridden airline?

Devinder Sharma in Ground Reality. Here

Meat is free in Vidharba..!

He's a butcher out of business. "I want to shift to a town like Panderkauda," says Sarfaraz Qureshi in Yavatmal district. "I'm unable to sell any meat in the villages I work in." Qureshi is a small operator who carries as much meat as he can load on to his motorcycle to poor tribal villages on the forest edge. And there he sells at very low prices. "Yet my business has collapsed," he says. But why? Have people in those villages stopped consuming meat? Are they now unable to afford even his prices?

"These past months, they're eating more meat than ever before," says Qureshi. "Only, it's free. The forests are stone dry and the drought has seen many wild animals coming out these past months to the fields and farms in search of water - only to be trapped and eaten. So how can I sell any meat? I've made many trips and sold nothing." There is no aspect of life in Vidarbha that has not been impacted by the severe water scarcity. 

From P. Sainath's article in India together 

To read the full article click here.

P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one of the two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions in changing the nature of the development debate on food, hunger and rural development in the Indian media.