The real question now is : how do you give productive employment to the people in these districts which account for 60 per cent of the districts in the country? How do you do that? What is you solution for that? Are we prepared to accept to give a commitment to the people in the rural areas that the government undertake to give a guarantee of employment? Are we prepared to accept that?...
.....Because there are lakhs of people in the rural areas who are not only without employment but also without any hope of employment. Also there are a large number of educated people in the rural areas without employment. The question of educated unemployment is no more only an urban problems. It is getting more a rural problem also, because the colleges and universities have expanded their activities and a large number of people are coming up in the rural areas also with technical degrees, engineering degrees and other degrees and they want jobs. When they come before us asking for jobs one feels guilty and what answer can one give? This is the problems. So, if at all you want to consider and tell us and make us believe that, you want to re-order the priorities, unless you are prepared to make a massive investment on a more well-considered basis nobody is going to believe it. Unless you are prepared to give a new style and I should say, a new reorientation to the rural life nothing is going to move. If you keep the villages as it is, nothing is going to happen. You will have to think about an agro-industrial pattern that must come up there. Are we prepared for that? Are we prepared to make all the efforts and give all the priorities for that? Unless you do that, I am not prepared to believe that you are prepared to give any priority to the rural areas. Merely providing a few crores here and a few crores there and saying that you are going to give some Khadi work and some village industries work, the problem is not going to be solved. Let us not fool ourselves any more with this sort of programmes.
....Mr. Patel, I remember your own speech in 1976 when you were sitting on this side. You made a very important point. Even where there is some sort of a good productivity, there is a problem. You said that this is the economic reality in India and what is the answer-for that? The moment there is growth in agricultural production, there is a fall in prices....
...if there is an increase in cotton production or increase in foodgrains production in one year, then in the next year there is a fall. If it is one good year for the agriculturist, next year he has one bad year because of fall in prices. Our agriculturist is also a wise man. He also considers his own economy. He may not be an economist, but he understands his economic interests (interruptions). He will not produce that which fetches him uneconomic return and he will go into some other thing. One year you export cotton and then next year you start importing cotton. Same is the case with regard to oil. In sugar also it is the same.
