Are our decision-makers too obsessed with statistics than reality?

Chamanlal Bhimabhai Chavda is a marginal farmer in Khamblav village in Surendranagar. He owns four acres of non-irrigated land which, for generations, he has tilled for desi cotton, or kala as it is colloquially called. Kala has a longer growth and harvesting cycle than BT cotton and is ready for selling in late March or April.

Unseasonal rains late last year destroyed cotton crop on three of his four acres. What nature didn't ruin, government policy did. An export ban on cotton was lifted for a few months and producers of BT cotton which was by then ready for sale earned Rs1,000 to Rs16,000 for 20 kg. Kala was not ready by then.

By the time it got ready, the ban had been re-imposed. In spite of the fall in the production of kala because of the rains and because acreage dedicated to it has shrunk, today over two lakh farmers who grow this are in a dire situation. No one is lifting their cotton, not even at the throwaway price of Rs500 for 20 kg.

Chamanbhai's economics doesn't work. The input cost of his cotton, not counting his and his family's labour (they could have earned Rs10,000 had they availed of MGNREGA - if fraud didn't take that away of course) comes to Rs15,040.

Even if he is able to sell his 20 mounds (400 kilos) at Rs500, all he gets back is Rs10,000. That is a clear financial loss of over Rs5,040. Add to this family's wages and the figure easily comes to Rs30,000. What must the family have eaten all year? What are they eating now? What are they wearing? Do his children go to school? How? How is Chamanlal going to pay back the bank loan which has fallen due? Without a further loan, how is he going to plant again? Will he turn to the money lender and get a further loan at exorbitant rates to pay back to the bank? Will he and his family ever get out of this cycle? Shouldn't we be concerned?

There are over two lakh farmers who still cultivate cotton that once made us the Manchester of the East. On an average family size of five (probably a huge underestimation) that makes over 10 lakh people, is being left to practically starve and destitute, spread over Saurashtra and Kutch. What hope and action can save them? Are we just waiting for more suicides, leaving more women and children homeless?

When the mandarins in the Planning Commission pontificate about poverty, have they tried to follow what they have deemed fair? Just last week, this august body declared that anyone in the urban areas who could earn Rs20 a day or Rs18 if in the rural areas, would not be considered below poverty level! Have any of the members actually gone to the shops, or to a school or hospital, and seen what this amount buys, or rather can not buy? Is this some kind of a joke? Will they try and live on this sum for a week with their families?

How can we get the decision-makers to see the reality, the people behind the numbers, their actual lives, so that there is understanding of human suffering rather than of statistics and robust figures that hide misery and truth?

How can we prevail on them that a very urgent and totally new look needs to be given towards actual people and their state to alleviate human suffering, agony, humiliations? That plans and policies need to have them as the focus and not numbers that can be jiggled or manipulated?

As for the cotton farmers, the governments, both at the Centre and the state must step in to immediately purchase their desi cotton at a respectable price of Rs1,200 or more per 20 kg. If super rich profit-making industries can be gifted lakh of crore every year as tax breaks and subsidies, do the poor and suffering of India have to be left to starve to death?

The writer is a noted danseuse and social  activist