Out of Focus

IS the Indian farmer no longer a presence in parliamentary politics? Not that agriculture is not on the election agenda. It is. And it is hardly possible for any political party to ignore the well-consolidated farmers' lobbies. But where does the resource poor, debt-bound tiller of the soil figure? And where the marginal dalit/tribal farmer, the displaced and the dispossessed? This is especially evident in the run-up to the current polls. The increasingly sophisticated public relations machinery, the high profile image-makers and media-planners and all the paraphernalia cannot obscure the fact that the interests and rights of the people on the margins have simply dropped out of the political agenda.