This is My Vision of Rural Development
Dear Mr. Abhimanyu and Sitaram Ji,
Firstly, I myself grew up in a village. Not only I did grow in a village environment, I also spent major part of my military service in a village environment. To that extent please grant me that I also understand the rural problem at least as much as you do, if not more.
I have seen Bhartiya Kisan Union grow and vanish. It was an ideal plateform for the rural people to stage a National Force to counter our corrupt politicians, but we did fail at the first obstacle. The decimation of BKU was well designed by the then UP CM Mr. Veer Bahadur Singh and then PM Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, by escalating the violence while the BKU members were moving through Moradabad to Lucknow to participate in a rally there.
In my opinion, I am looking for an organization, that is self sustainable and that can generate employment and revenue for the people participating. I don't want the subsequent organization to be non-political as the BKU was. I know some of elite members just want to keep the organization as Non-Political because it is easy to manage the one. The question here is getting work done. In a village, if we are looking to start the corporate shops, where we establish our own distribution system, of farm produce and deny the middleman who makes more money than the farmers then we need to take every one along. If vegetables, grains, sugar, and all other basic need items can only be purchased through these rural corporate shops then, we would be able to get the right price to the farmer and cheap commodity to the consumer. We will also rule out tax evasion by these middlemen apart from denying them the fat profit that they make from the hard working farmer's produce. Now when we talk about such a system, then I guess we need to take every one along. I know it is a tall order but certainly achievable.
Now the political side of the organization. One would argue that if the organization is having a political side, it would fall as there would be power struggle. Yes, these are the pitfalls of such organizations. Actually, BKU also fell becauses of power struggle with in the organization. My visioin of such an organization is based on NRI's and Natives both coming together. The organization needs the core decision making group of intellectuals and off course the funding. Lets take each at one time.
The core group that makes decision. This group primarily would be comprising the NRI's who have no political stakes in India. Difficult but achievable. Every issue can be discussed in a democratic manner. The other group will be the execution group, which would be primarily the youth of India who would be contesting for the political posts (elections) and would be working on the directions of this intellectual group's collective wisdom. We can have experts in this group from all walks of life. The performance of each member of the executive group be under microscope and his / her retaining the post would depend only on his/her performance.
The executive groups at village level. These groups would be running the corporate shops. Ensuring the money is arranged for the farmers when they need it and they don't have to sell their products at less price in distress.
There is a lot I have in my mind, that I shall share with every one in due course if it is agreed. If not, then I am not the one who will walk away from the meet, for it would amount to most undemocratic action of resorting to the theory "Either My Way" or "No Way".
If all Jat meet can achieve these objective that I have in my vision, I don't mind keeping it all Jat meet. But I am certainly against, spending time and energy on organizing a meet just to praise the achievements of the past leaders, and read out history to the public. We need some thing innovative, and practical coming out of such meets.
I am open to criticism, which I am sure would come in plenty and probably may even hurt me. But that is OK and is part of any democratic setup. I believe, that if "Criticism hurts, it was well deserved".
Thanks a lot for raising a very valid question. I hope I have been able to address it to some extent.
