Balai H. K., Assistant Professor, Dept. of Agricultural Economics,
Jagannath University, Jaipur (Rajasthan)
Meshram M., Ad hoc Assistant Professor, Dept. of Agricultural Extension
Pt.KLS, CHRS, Rajnandgaon, MGUVV
Bairwa K.C., Associate Professor (Agricultural Economics),
COA, Sriganganagar, SKRAU, Bikaner, Rajasthan
Introduction
Have you heard about a country called Venezuela? It is a big country. Bigger than the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Bengal and Orissa combined and population is only 35 million less than the population of Delhi. God has given everything to Venezuela, fertile land, abundant rain, hundreds of small rivers and thousands of miles long beach. In spite of having such fertile land and so much water, there is so much hunger in this country today that men have virtually turned into cannibals. There is nothing like farming of crops, fruits & vegetables, dairy, poultry, fishing, etc. in this country. Even if they can't grow wheat, rice, and vegetables for such a big country, there are grazing areas millions of hectares. Does Venezuela not even have a few cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats to graze and provide meat to its starving population? There is so much abundance of fish in the rivers and ocean. Yet Venezuela is still starving. The situation of inflation has reached such levels that if you take a bag of Bolivar to a store, you will not get even a pocketful of bread an inflation rate is 16,98,488% compared to last year. Today you will get 3607 Venezuelan Bolivars in exchange for an Indian rupee. You may be surprised to know that Venezuela also has the largest crude oil reserves in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia.
You would also be surprised to know that Venezuela was a developed and prosperous nation just 20 years ago, but the wrong policies of its leaders turned a prosperous nation into a beggar in just 20 years. Today the situation is so bad that many Venezuelan women have had to resort to prostitution for just a piece of bread. A good leader can turn his country into Singapore in 20 years and an incompetent leader can turn his country into a Venezuela.
What was the mistake of Venezuelan leaders?
After World War II, when there was tremendous demand for oil in the world and the prices were skyrocketing, Venezuela was having a gala time. In 1945, the country was making 1 million barrels of oil per day.
The government started distributing free stuff to its citizens. Every service in the country was government provided and every service was free. In exchange for oil, goods came from all over the world; ration, cereals, fruits, vegetables, medicines, machinery and textiles, everything was imported in exchange for the oil, and the government gave its citizens everything free.
In the 50's and 60's, when the whole world was working hard to increase manufacturing productivity, in Venezuela, not even a needle was produced. They even imported commodities like cabbage and tomatoes from Europe.
Venezuela is a very beautiful country. Yet they don't have a tourism industry. Venezuelans were so hostile to tourists that if a tourist ever went there by mistake, it is said that nobody would offer him even a glass of water. Usually in such countries foreigners come from abroad looking of employment, but since there was free service in this country, all the parties and even the people of Venezuela were against the entry of foreigners into the country. Their thought was why foreigners should take advantage of our free service. The result was that the citizens did not do anything for a living, neither farming nor any other industry, nor the government did not let even labor to be imported from abroad to let industries develop. Therefore, there is no development in the country, even tourism.
Then one day price of crude oil started falling. The government owned Oil Company was PDVSA, and the government, typical of a communist government, told the company to give jobs to everyone. The company told that it does not need more employees. But the government insisted on it and gave at least one man of every family a job in the government oil company PDVSA where he did not do any work and took home a free, fat salary.
Then the price of oil fell further and the oil company started incurring huge losses. As a result, providing free stuff to the population became impossible. Slowly every commodity became scarce. 35 million freeloaders, who had not done any work in life, started looting. Girls got into prostitution. The socialist government still did not learn. It started taking loans to continue providing free stuff to its population.
Today Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, is the world's most unsafe city, where people slaughter, and girls sell their body for just a piece of bread. One plate food costs 1.5 million Bolivar.
How can such a large country not even produce wheat rice for just 3.5 crore (35 million) people?
Today if the Venezuelan government invites only 1000 farmers from India's Punjab and gives them the necessary machinery, then in just 6 months our farmers will produce more than enough grains, vegetables, fruits and milk to feed the entire country of Venezuela. In India, the district of Kapurthala alone produces so much melon that the whole of North India's demand for melons is met from it.
The question is, why did the government teach its citizens to be such freeloaders?
Who made the people of the country so incompetent and irresponsible? When there is so much hunger in the country, even if the people throw seeds of fruits and vegetables in their backyard, then in the next two months there will be so much fruits and vegetables that there will be no hunger. People have been hungry for the last 10 years. Yet, neither government learns, nor the people.
All political parties in India slowly migrating to this:
With huge tax revenues from public they are announcing free schemes and items Not a single, all the political parties involved in this Gambling. They are just distributing hard earned money of tax payers as their ancestor’s property. This will encourage younger generations to look for free without hardworking. Which may lead our Country to disastrous situations?
References:
Acosta, Diego 2016. Free Movement in South America: The Emergence of an Alternative Model? Migration Information Source.
Adolfo, S. 2026. Crimen de lesa humanidad contra CARITAS” (Crime against humanity against CARITAS), El Columnero website.
Bartley, K., Frías, H. C., Carmona, P., & Helms, J. 2008. The revolution will not be televised.
Bertone, A. M. 1999. Sexual trafficking in women: International political economy and the politics of sex. Gender Issues Winter, doi:10.1007/s12147-999-0020x.
Bindel, Julie 2007. Tourism built on abuse. The Guardian london Retrieved. doi:10.1008/ s12147-999-0030x
Brown, Tom 2007. enezuelans, fleeing Chavez, seek U.S. safety net reuters.
Carvajal, Dayra 2017. As Colombia Emerges from Decades of War, Migration Challenges Mount. Migration Information.
Casey, Nicholas 2016. "Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Economic Collapse". The New York Times.
Charlie Devereux & Raymond Colitt 2013. Venezuelans' Quality of Life Improved in UN Index Under Chavez. Bloomberg L.P.
Chibba, Michael 2014 Contemporary issues on human trafficking, migration and exploitation, Migration and Development, 3:2, 163173, DOI: 10.1080/21632324.2014.885286.
Corrales, Javier; Romero, Carlos 2013. U.S.-Venezuela relations since the 1990s: coping with mid-level security threats. New York: Routledge. pp. 79–81. ISBN 0415895243
Danailova-Trainor, G. and F. Laczko. 2010. “Trafficking in Persons and Development: Towards Greater Policy Coherence.” International Migration 48(4): 38-83.
Kelly, L. 2003. The wrong debate: Reflections on why force is not the key issue with respect to trafficking in women for sexual exploitation. Feminist Review, 73, 139–144. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400086 .
Koser, K., & Salt, J. 1997. The geography of highly skilled international migration. Population, Space and Place, 3(4), 285-303.
Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. E. 1993. Theories of international migration: A review and appraisal. Population and development review, 431-466.
Waters, M. C., & Foner, N. 2001. Growing up West Indian and African American: Gender and class differences in the second generation. Islands in the city: West Indian migration to New York.
Wolken, C.L. 2006. “Feminist Legal Theory and Human Trafficking in the United States: Towards a New Framework.” University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender & Class 6(2): 407.
****
0 Comments