Blatantly insensitive

Without claiming any sort of moral high-ground, it’s perhaps safe to say that when those without any respect for the dignity of labour or the sanctity of life give preachy and annoying sermons about bravery, it strikes one as macabre, insensitive and cruel. “Any person who commits suicide escapes from his responsibilities and leaves the burden on his wife and innocent children and such people are cowards,” Haryana Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar said on Wednesday. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Dhankar’s brand of chest-thumping, chauvinistic brand of politics is now invariably associated with the ruling establishment at the Centre. To quote some statistics: ten states show a higher farm suicide rate in 2011 than in 2001. It includes the major farming zones of Punjab and Dhankar’s Haryana. Journalists with allegedly right-wing psychological biases will say that this is selective distortion. It’s not. They may even feign fake outrage and suggest that in Haryana, the contribution of agriculture sector in total Net State Domestic Product [NSDP] decreased over the period due to a high growth in manufacturing and service industry, and slower rate of growth in the agriculture sector of the State, which has a high rate of farmer suicide has much reason to indulge in “political introspection”. However when public figures who are rigorously and democratically elected by the voters of this nation as the guardians of any state’s most vulnerable workers, especially farmers, make insensitive statements like Dhankar has made on Wednesday, then they must understand that public figures and their fawning followers no matter how mindless and thoughtless they maybe are and will be held to a higher degree of scrutiny than the rest. Maybe Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands this better than anyone else. This article may be riddled with psychological biases aplenty and to the cold-hearted it may even seem like a typical bleeding heart liberal piece, but every word of it is true. However, it’s not harsh. To paraphrase the author Cormac McCarthy:  “Truth has no temperature.”