I am a master in India

Chapter 408 Method
Dwaram gathered the villagers in an open space at the foot of the mountain, where Muna stood in front of several gnarled and twisted palm trees to give a speech, while hundreds of women and men sat on the lawn.

He doesn't speak in a loose, casual manner like a public speaker; instead, he focuses on key points and connects with his audience.

Muna told the villagers that the seed company would be up and running soon, and that it would solve the farmers' problems with seeds and fertilizers, and provide loans if necessary.

Such a promise naturally drew cheers; after all, he was a minister, and he couldn't possibly lie.

Even if they were deceived, the villagers didn't care. This was the first time in so many years that such an important person had visited Kazi Village, so they treated it as just watching the show.

Muna didn't take it to heart; he understood the farmers' perspective, as politicians always made various promises during elections.

Before the election, everyone claimed to be from the countryside, but after the election, they turned around and went back to the city, never to return to the countryside.

Muna knew it would take time to get them to open up. He wasn't in a hurry, because the Progressive Party would soon tackle the two major problems here.

Once the seeds and fertilizer are in place, the farmers will naturally trust you. In a way, they are actually quite simple and honest.

Muna and Dewaram also went to the fields where the villagers were working. They walked along the narrow, square ridges, having to avoid the manure left by the farmers during their work.

They saw a little boy standing bent over under a low palm tree trunk, shaking an earthenware pot. He was collecting palm sap, not to sell, but to take home and drink himself.

Muna took a closer look; the liquid had a pungent smell, was grayish in color, and was covered with ants.

He continued walking, passing a depression overgrown with weeds. It was a pond, but it had dried up 10 years ago.

Most farmers use diesel water pumps to draw water, but these pumps are expensive, costing around 5 rupees each, not including installation costs.

The small installation company hired by the farmers charged 150 rupees per foot of excavation, but to pump out groundwater, they would have to dig at least 250 feet.

Even so, water is not always found, so they usually have to drill several holes in different places, and each hole costs a lot of money, which makes the farmers even more indebted.

This area is far from the Ganges, and the old irrigation canals that were brought here have been blocked in countless sections along the way.

During the dry season, only the Ramganga River in the south can provide a small amount of water. However, influenced by the market, farmers have shifted from growing millet to cotton, corn, and soybeans, all of which are highly dependent on water.

The government promised to build irrigation canals on 10 million acres of farmland, but four years later, a local expert told Muna that despite having paid 60 million rupees to the contractor, not a single meter of irrigation canal had been built.

Muna was not surprised at all; if he hadn't been watching over them, the irrigation canals in the east might have ended up the same way.

The urgent need for water among nearby farmers has driven them to dig wells in a desperate search for water, a disturbing national trend.

Muna had read a foreign report that pointed out that in 20 years, the number of wells in India had surged from 200 million to 2300 million.

However, digging too deep will result in saltwater, which can cause arsenic pollution. This phenomenon has already occurred in agriculturally developed states like Bangladesh and Punjab.

"As the water sources dried up and the wells were abandoned, the farmers began to kill each other and commit suicide," Dwaram sighed.

“Where else nearby can we get water?” Muna asked.

"That lake in the mountains, but the water is unusable. You've seen it yourself; it will poison all the crops."

Muna was somewhat speechless; as the Minister of Industry, he could not order the pharmaceutical factories to shut down.

Once the farmers' problems are solved, the workers' problems will arise.

And who would interfere with factory production for the sake of an insignificant farmer?

“Indian newspapers are filled with news of farmers committing suicide out of despair due to poverty, debt, and drought,” Dwaram said.

A recent survey conducted by the Indian Planning Commission in Uttar Pradesh revealed that irrigation canals there were stagnant and water storage for irrigation had been greatly reduced.

As a result, the number of irrigation wells is growing exponentially, especially in the central and western regions, where water depletion has directly led to farmers committing suicide.

For Dwaram, all of this was part of his life. The previous year, three farmers around him had committed suicide because they couldn't repay debts of several hundred thousand rupees.

Most of these debts were incurred while digging wells to find water, as water was the only thing that allowed them to continue agricultural production.

Even Dwaram's own life is quite unstable. He starts working at four o'clock every morning, first feeding two water buffaloes, and then goes to work in the fields with his wife at six o'clock, bringing his own simple lunch, which includes rice, vegetables, and lentils.

They take a break at nine o'clock, have lunch at two o'clock in the afternoon, and finish work and go home at six o'clock in the evening.

His wife went home to cook, while he chatted with other villagers in the small teahouse until eight o'clock.

In good years, Dwaram can earn 2 to 3 rupees a year, but this income is not guaranteed, and he could very well owe that much money.

Even if he makes money, he has to consider his large family and live within his means. He has parents, a wife, three daughters, and a son aged between 5 and 15.

Fortunately, he was still the head of the agricultural union and would occasionally organize villagers to make handmade cigarettes to supplement their household income.

With his reputation, Dwaram had connections in dozens of nearby villages, and he even planned to sell his family's land and start a garment manufacturing business in a nearby city.

He planned to rent a place, buy a few sewing machines, and then make some cheap shirts to sell in the market.

However, his wife disagreed. She persuaded Dwaram to study elections and then use his expertise to become an elector in the region during the general election. Coincidentally, he met Ron at the demonstration last year, and then Muna.

Dwaram knew this was his chance, so he busied himself with introducing Muna to the villagers in the nearby villages.

Naturally, Dwaram accepted Muna's invitation and joined the Progressive Party.

From now on, he will be the representative of the Progressive Party in the Herdoy region, fully responsible for the party's development work there.

As party leader, Muna also visited other nearby villages to learn about the living conditions of the local villagers.

Some villagers live in two-story concrete buildings, with piles of wood in their yards, which they collect from the forest for firewood.

From the outside, the conditions seemed quite good, but Dwaram said that the villager family had only recently moved in.

This house was built thirty years ago. Its owner had worked as a laborer for the village doctor for twenty years and used the money he had saved to build this house.

In fact, to pay off his debts, that person rarely lived here and instead worked and earned money in the Gulf region.

Dwaram also went to Dubai, doing the same work as millions of South Asian immigrants.

The villagers went there to find such work and had to pay a middleman a commission of 5 rupees. Then, about a dozen villagers left Herdoy together, their first time leaving home.

They first took a train to Mumbai, then stayed there for a week while waiting for the documents to be prepared.

They slept in a cramped little room for the rest of the week because they didn't have much money and still had a large debt to pay off the middleman.

They longed to see the city they had seen so many times in movies, but ultimately restrained themselves from the urge.

On the night the ship was to depart for Dubai, they were handed over to a man who appeared to be a foreman.

After arriving in Dubai, they worked on a construction site, working nine hours a day, six days a week, with only Fridays off.

They lived in labor tents, which they called "double-decker khatiya," meaning bunk beds.

The laborers would try to avoid going to the city. As long as they worked here for two years, they could earn back the money to pay off their debts and save an additional 5 rupees.

Many people used the money to build houses and install wells on their fields.

The village had lost power, so they sat outside Dwaram's house to escape the heat.

The neighbors listened to their conversation the whole time, including a short, bespectacled man with a sour face.

Dwaram downplayed the situation in the Gulf countries, at which point the person next to him spoke up: "He didn't tell you exactly how bad it is there."

His gaze was sharp as he said this.

“There’s no need to go into such detail,” Dvalam said with a smile and a shake of his head.

The man, named Janadan, was a shoemaker in the village. He leaned closer to Muna and said he had worked in Dubai and Saudi Arabia for many years.

“It’s terrible there,” he said. “The Arabs hate us. We have to pay the brokers a lot of money and do a lot of hard work, but in the end we get nothing.”

Even so, they had no other choice. Last year, he sent his son to Dubai to work as an electrician, paying an intermediary 8 rupees for the job.

He borrowed the money, and in just one year, it grew to 10 rupees with interest.

“It feels like racing against a clock that runs faster than you,” he said, then sat back down and turned to look at the endless plains.

Muna asked him if he could make money as a shoemaker in the village.

He looked at Dwaram and said with a smile, “The villagers never have money to make new shoes; everyone goes barefoot. My wife earns 500 rupees a month rolling cigarettes, and that’s how our family survives.”

As Minister of Industry, Muna knew the only way to solve the problem was to shift farmers into factories.

In India, farming is a dead end; it barely allows you to survive.

Industrialization is the ultimate answer, but how difficult it is to achieve.

Let alone Uttar Pradesh, Muna feels immense pressure even to improve the lives of farmers in the Kazi village area.

All he can do now is help local farmers solve their seed and fertilizer problems, nothing more.

Perhaps only Mr. Sue has the power to change everything.

Muna secretly considered how to report this matter to Mr. Suer.

While his subordinates in Uttar Pradesh were actively expanding their party's territory, Ron was also busy running his own business in New Delhi.

(End of this chapter)