As a person working in the IT industry, I understand what Meera Gopalakrishnan intended to say (“Are IT people the fall guys?” Open Page, May 22). She never equated the loans on cars and homes to farm loans. She only said people working in the IT industry, like those employed in other professions, have their own problems. Most people clearly seem to have an unjustified opinion that the IT guys have no real problems because they work in air-conditioned offices and are paid well.
Gurram Karthik,
Hyderabad
Without meaning any offence to agriculture, I would like to mention that no profession can be belittled, especially when it has the capability of making India's economy surge. Suicide among farmers is no doubt unfortunate but how are the IT professionals to blame? Does anyone care about the growing number of suicides among IT professionals who work under immense stress?
Nishant Jain,
Hyderabad
It is unfortunate that many feel a majority of IT professionals don't earn their high pay and that everything comes to them from heaven. While this mindset is deplorable, the comparison between car loans, traffic jams and long working hours in the IT industry to the problems faced by farmers is unacceptable. In fact, many Indians work more than 12 hours in a harsher atmosphere for lesser returns.
K. Jegadeesh,
Erode
Even as one who worked in the IT industry for some time, I think the comparison between farmers and IT professionals is not correct. Actually, a farmer does not have any working hours. He is required to go to his farm even in the midnight with a lamp to water his crops (because three-phase electricity is available only during the night. In the morning, either the voltage is not sufficient or there is no power). As for pay and loan waivers, IT people get fat pay cheques because of the “enabling environment” the government provides to their companies. Every year the “revenue forgone statement” in the budget is also getting fatter and fatter. Both farmers and IT people contribute in their own way. But given the condition of farmers, we should be more sensitive to them.
Swetha Nandyala,
Hyderabad
The working conditions and the long hours in the IT industry are all too well known and anyone joining it does so only for a hefty pay packet and comfortable lifestyle. Just as we expect those employed in our homes to work in a manner that is commensurate with, or even more than, what we pay them, the IT industry expects work for what it pays. No point in complaining. IT jobs may be insecure, but farmers' operations are uncertain with the vagaries of weather, man-made power cuts, shortage of farm inputs and difficult bank loans.
S. Suryanarayanan,
Chennai
Some time ago, as I drove from Pulivendula to Kadapa, I found heaps of onions on the roadside. The farmers were waiting for a middleman to come and take them. I was stunned to learn that they were selling the onions at Rs 7 a kg when its market price is Rs 14 a kg. I am sure when the price of onion shot up to Rs 70 a kg, traders, not farmers, made a killing.
D.S. Sastry,
Hyderabad
The age-old India versus Bharat battle has come to the fore again. The transition from the nomadic form of life to a settled one and, then, to urbanism became possible only due to surplus food production. Agricultural revolution happened with the help of technology. The Constitution says India is a union of states. Let it be a union of minds too.
Mathew Koshy,
New Delhi
I am a farmer as well as an IT guy, and I derive pride and pleasure in being both. It is incorrect to compare and establish the superiority of one vocation over the other. Both agriculture and IT are products of progress. The notion of farming comes from the knowledge that nature can be used for the benefit of mankind. And IT is the product of cumulative knowledge acquired by mankind, built on applied science in the branch of engineering.
P. Gireesh,
Bangalore
