Economics sometimes leads to great injustice and cruel realities. However, sometimes the way man is by his very nature leads to even greater ones. Our economy is growing at a tremendous rate. In India, the growth rate is 9%. Intuitively, this means that the output of the country is increasing by 9% every year.

But what is the quality of this output? The necessity to measure everything in currency has led us to believe that all output is equal. Is there such a thing as healthy and unhealthy output? Can a country have a lower economic growth rate and still be fundamentally stronger than a country that has a higher growth rate simply because of the type of growth it is having?

I say, yes it can. Let me take the example of India, where the difference is clearly visible. Being one of the most populated countries in the world, India’s need for food grains is tremendous. Because of it’s still rural nature, the large amount of open land, and its culture, 70% of India’s economy is agrarian. This is natural and healthy.

However, in recent years, the share of agriculture has been going down significantly. There was a time when the economy was 90% agrarian. This decrease is due to the rise of services, which are taking over a huge chunk of the produce of India.

Image Credit: Escape_to_Christel

I have no problem with this per se. What I do have a problem with is that the services are very much more profitable than agriculture. With far less work, a person like me (a writer), can earn literally 10 times more than a farmer – by working with 1/5th of the effort. Economics is such that because of the scarcity of writers like me, I earn more due to demand and supply, not because what I’m producing is 10 times more valuable than that of the farmer.

How is this justified? Likely, the farmers don’t even know that I’m living such an easy life while they break their backs to essentially feed me. The condition of farmers in India is pathetic. Large numbers of farmers commit suicide daily due to poverty and inability to pay off debts. They are killing themselves to feed people like me who don’t produce anything essential like food.

Cities in general produce very little of any real value. People are extremely busy working in the stock market, or sitting at a computer somewhere adding a minuscule amount of value to a probably useless value chain. They get paid far more than a farmer who toils day in and day out to produce something of value, which is bought from him at a pittance and used to fuel the people in cities.

Image Credit: Stephanie Booth

For how long can this continue? Market economics dictates that sooner or later, the farmers will realize that a better living can be made in the cities and migrate to them. Then there will be a food shortage, and prices will rise until it is profitable to be a farmer once more.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. The prices of farm produce are not dictated solely by market forces. Instead of paying through my nose for the food that I eat, I’m paying much less than that. Prices are controlled by middlemen who force the desperate farmers to sell at lower prices.

The bottom line is that it’s just too unfair. The farmers are feeding the huge glutted cities, which hum and buzz and produce nothing of value, while they themselves are being exploited. How will this end? One can only hope that some day, we will begin to realize just how precarious our position is, and how grateful we must be to those who feed us.

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