Another open letter to Shri Devendra Fadnavis Ji

To,

The Honourable Chief Minister,

Maharashtra State.

Dear Sir,

One piece of blunt advice (not that you need it, you are a wise man yourself)- ignore the moron Rajdeep Sardesai and his ilk- he is a nobody and even a common man knows that by now. We all know to what levels the main stream media (MSM) can stoop to, so it is best to ignore them and keep doing our work. Devendra Fadnavis 

Never argue with fools -first, they bring you down to their level, and then beat you by sheer experience. Rajdeep Sardesai and the other stooges of MSM fall into this category.

However, sir, the citizens of Maharashtra are unaware of the good work our government is doing, especially for farmers- and I request our PR department to spread the awareness. We need to highlight the initiatives, not only in terms of good politics and strategy, but to spread more and more awareness to the common man about the benefits of these initiatives.

Devendra Fadnavis 

I am a son of a farmer from North Maharashtra, historically known as ‘Khandesh’ where we have been lucky to have a decent rainfall, but my heart goes out to my brothers, sisters and my annadata’s in Marathwada, Amravati, Parbhani regions, where there has been a virtual drought. The Jalyukta Shivar Yojna has been successful, but not many people know about it, which is not good. An awareness about this will motivate farmers in other villages to adopt it ASAP. Our babus in other regions would be forced to act upon through peer and local pressure.

I am concerned about the middlemen in the farmer-to-market business called APMC. It is a known fact that whether the end consumer or the farmer benefits or not, these middlemen always, always benefit. I know for a fact that in the onion situation, no farmer had excess onion in his stock and no one had stock in the market….where did the onion go? I think we both know the answer to this. This lobby needs to be dealt with a strong hand making no exception to political affiliations. Devendra Fadnavis 

In drought situations, my worry was and is, that the government would be forced to order sugar factories to not purchase sugarcanes from farmers and not manufacture sugar, as sugarcane will be used as fodder for the livestock. However, these middlemen will pick this cue and stock sugar upto the brim of their warehouses, to reap gold when sugar prices go up due to demand-supply gap. At the end of the day, it is the common man who would suffer. We need to find a way out of this, in case a drought situation happens. I sincerely hope I am wrong in my judgement.

I am also concerned about the farmer suicides. There have been attempts by our government and our own real life hero Nana Patekar ‘saheb’ to help families of farmers committing suicides, but I hope this does not backfire- what if farmers start suicide just because some one (our government or Nana saheb) is giving their family money? It would a dreadful situation, would it not? Such has happened in Andhra Pradesh last year. Instead, could we utilize this money to help farmers build an additional source of income of some sort, other than farming. This is not to state that he should give up on farming, but an additional source of income always benefits and mitigates risk. Devendra Fadnavis 

How can we spread awareness to farmers using tools like WeatherForecastMap, metservice, Accuweather, SkymetWeather etc. all of which fairly accurately predict weather/ rains so farmers do not sow in advance? Using the power of the internet and mobile, can we help our farmer use this technology to understand weather conditions and there by take better and informed decisions on sowing, etc?

Could we have good budget allocation to build more check dams and incentivize people at the gram panchayat level who would assist and aid the government in terms of ‘Shramdaan’ for such projects? That way it would be a win-win in terms of involving people at the grass root and also save on costs for the state government. Devendra Fadnavis 

Can we involve influencing people, say, our spiritual leaders, our ‘kirtankaars’ and folk artists to spread awareness of the initiatives taken by our government for farmers, so that more and more villages benefit? We have seen, corruptions ends wherever there is informed and enhanced communication.

We have large hopes on you and the BJP government, considering  you were handpicked by our beloved PM to lead the state. We look up to you to give us good governance to the state of Maharashtra, which we have not had since long. Devendra Fadnavis 

I have zero administrative experience and certainly do not claim to be an expert. Please do not consider this as an advice- except on Rajdeep Sardesai and the MSM. It was wonderful to see a CM, after a long time, respond to stupid and biased allegations by a journalist…and I am proud of that.

I am hoping to do my part as a citizen of this country and the state, and through this letter to assist you in any which way possible. Your orders will be my blessings. Devendra Fadnavis 

Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Prakash Chaudhari​

(Sent via mail)
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