The worst hit fruit by the change of climate this year is mangoes!
Usually in any fruit shop, one would come across a few varieties of mangoes from the middle of April. In the adjacent town to our home, I visited ten fruit shops to look for different varieties of mangoes. Only five shops had mangoes and they had just one local variety!
I went to the fruit market and to my dismay I found that instead of ten truck loads of mangoes that arrive from the middle of April, the market has only one or two trucks arriving this year!
While travelling from Coimbatore to Krishangiri by road last week, I found that many mango orchards are bereft of their normal rich harvest!
There has been a strong lobbying by some environmentalist to avoid using chemical fertilisers, pesticides and regular copious watering. But the farmers have not been able to develop organic farming or use organic pest control methods or develop drip irrigation methods. The farmers were cash starved to make any investment on their gardens! So the orchards have suffered neglect on account of lobbying. The farmers who look for their annual income from their produce has very little to look forward to! A farmer who has a way side temporary shop near Erode for the passers by, used to sell mangoes worth of about ten thousand rupees in a day in the previous seasons, but he does not have mangoes to reach even the quarter of that in a day during this season!
This is a typical adverse story about the ill effects of lobbying! The public pressure gets mounted to a high pitch by the activities of the lobbyists against an issue. But the disadvantages of forcing an action are too many and not even well thought about!
When we canvass for a cause, it is necessary that the benefits are more than the disadvantages. I have a suspicion that some causes for which the lobbyists raise campaigns are least wholistic in perspective and outcome!
MCMathew (text and photo)
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