CAN INDIA INTRODUCE ECO-CONSCRIPTION?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/17/utopian-thinking-students-working-land-university-eco-conscription?CMP=twt_gu

Reading this article by Hugh Warwick made me think how an eco-conscription would help India and its farming and agriculture sector. India has never adopted conscription of any kind. Many countries have a military conscription, India never needed it largely because of its huge population. Some say we must adopt it, if only to impart discipline amongst the youth. But many would not want a forced military training. Perhaps rightly so. We compensated for the lack of it when schools and colleges adopted the National Cadet Corps training which does an excellent work in imparting basic military and physical education to students.

But the idea of an eco-conscription is indeed exciting. Imagine 18-21 years old living in the rural areas, helping farmers, understanding their hard work and their hardships, understanding the financial problems they face, why increasing number of farmers commit suicide (in fact sending them to such regions), the irrigation and rain and water problems, what can be grown where, why the increasing use of pesticides, land fertility, fragmentation of land and so on. Imagine the ideas that can be generated from these youth with diverse education backgrounds to tackle the many issues that Indian agriculture faces today. This collective spirit will ensure that the farmer is not alone in his path to provide us all food.

Besides living amongst nature has many advantages. The youth will be more creative and aware of the ecological disasters making them environment conscious. It also takes them away from their laptops and mobiles and computer games. Staying in rural homes can teach them the Indian values and culture. Like in my travels, whenever I visited a rural home, they would not let me go without a good meal, however poor they are. For them even today guest is God. Such aspects of living can imbibe many positives of our culture in the youth,

We are a young country with intelligent engineers, doctors, IT, finance professionals and scientists. Imagine all these students begin their professional careers, with the farmer and agriculture in mind, developing ideas to create an agriculture revolution like never before.

While many appreciated Hughes Warwick article, it received a lot of flak too and many ridiculed it. So will many Indians to this idea. For any government it takes guts to implement any kind of conscription at a national level. But perhaps, if not a conscription for now, we can start with a NCC like model in agriculture training, which schools and colleges can adopt.

Let us change the way we educate our youth and in turn lets help farmers and the society as a whole.