Keep this story in the back of your mind the next time someone tells you that only the state should be trusted with our fresh water resources. BBC;
India’s western state of Maharashtra has told banana and sugar cane farmers they will not get water for irrigation if they have more than two children.
The state’s water minister says the move will help curb the rising population and solve water shortages. The upper house of the state’s parliament has backed the bill and it will go to the lower house on Monday. Water shortages in the past few years have caused droughts that have led to hundreds of farmers committing suicide.
The scheme is the brainchild of state water resources minister, Ajit Pawar, who is the nephew of the federal agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar. The bill’s backers say it is needed because water resources are static while the population is continuing to rise. The bill also requires all banana and sugar cane farmers, regardless of child numbers, to use drip or sprinkling systems of irrigation within five year or lose their supply.
The bill is targeting the crops because of the large amount of water they require.
Sharad Joshi, founder of the farmers’ association in Maharashtra and the farmers’ coordination committee nationwide, said: “If the Maharashtra government is imposing restrictions on agriculture and asking farmers to implement drip irrigation, it should also make finances available, at least in the form of credit.”
If the bill is approved into law it will not apply to farmers who already have more than two children.
Maharashtra is agriculturally one of India’s most advanced states but has suffered bad droughts over the past few years.
Kind of them to allow for existing kids.
This is no totalitarian state – India is the world’s largest democracy. For all the criticism leveled at their one child rule, the Chinese at least had the intellectual honesty to simply force families to abort the surplus.
They really got a problem over there. They haven’t had a war in a while which was the usual way to control population. That whole area needs some kind of control, even if they feel it’s a so called rights violation as it may mean there survival.
They could take the Belgium approach and kill them AFTER they’re born! I’ve got an upset stomach after reading this.
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002036.htm
“Nearly half the newborn babies who died in Flanders over a recent year-long period were helped to die by their doctors, a new study reported yesterday.”