Aisee Taisee Democracy !

Between a crop and crop...

Poverty and unemployment have haunted India continuously within living memory. The cities may now be dotted with pockets of enormous affluence, but the lot of the small farmer, the rural labourer, remains unchanged:

His speech is of mortgaged bedding,
On his vine he borrows yet,
At his heart his daughter's wedding,
In his eye foreknowledge of debt,
He eats and hath indigestion,
He toils and he may not stop;
His life is a long drawn question
Between a crop and crop.

- Excerpt from the last chapter Panorama of the Lost Decades in We The Nation By Nani Palkhivala.