The widespread agrarian distress in the country is in no small measure due to the withdrawal or dilution of the various support systems that the state extended to the agricultural sector earlier (“ >It never trickles down ”, July 26). The most tragic and visible fallout of this has been the phenomenon of farmer suicides. But no less tragic is the distress migration that the reforms have led to among agrarian communities in Bihar, Odisha, Assam, West Bengal and U.P. Post-1991, thousands of young men across India who once depended on agriculture have had to move out of their States to make a living. Even a small and remote State like Kerala is witnessing these effects. A few decades ago, the number of ‘non-native’ people in Kerala was only a few thousands. Today, the number is unofficially estimated to be about 30 lakh, or nearly 10 per cent of of the State’s population. As it is basically a remittance-based economy characterised by relatively high wages, the State is a big draw with the migrants. Cut off from their roots and living miserable lives in dingy and squalid dwellings, these migrants, to my mind, are a constant reminder of the fact that the reforms initiated since 1991 have not benefitted the most vulnerable in this country. If at all, they have been made only more vulnerable.
G.G. Menon,Tripunithura, Kerala
