Slowdown, Targeting farmer

Slowdown has becoming a buzzword for lunch discussions nowadays. Its difficult to find any newspaper front page without a mention or hint towards this global economic turmoil. However, for rural India, whose dependence is on agriculture, global downturn hardly matters. Although it may have some impact with a lag (eg. textile industry suffering, cotton prices falling and so on), but the relative difference is not much. And so companies are targeting rural India - as this article in livemint says. "due to its primary dependence on domestic consumption rather than exports, rural India would be even more insulated, given that almost 60% of its households are dependent on agriculture, where fortunes fluctuate more on the basis of vagaries of the monsoon than those of the Sensex or Lehman Brothers and AIG! Even the increasing spiral of inflation, with its direct impact on prices of vegetables, would indeed benefit the farmer, fetching him a better price for his produce."

Not quite true as I mentioned earlier. The prices are falling and the effect goes to source i.e. agricultural commodities. Government is already finding it difficult to maintain the MSPs. There is another interesting article about how government meddling is creating the slowdown in the agricultural sector. The first few lines have got some sense of humour, but sadly it is true partially - " How will Indian agribusiness fare over the next six months? The answer lies not in demand-supply, volatility in international markets, credit supply or weather. It all depends of sarkari mood".