If it is the very first day of the new year, and you get a chance to listen to a Ph.D. viva voce, it can indeed be a very happy feel, right? Luckily, the BMCC Research Center provided me with such an opportunity this morning. I could attend online the viva of Dr. Lanjekar Sir's research student.
For me, listening to it was a lesson in rural distress. The study related to 2014-15 to 2019-20. It detailed the usual sad story which P. Sainath, the noted "Hindu" columnist and the author of a much acclaimed book entitled "Everybody Loves a Good Drought" has repeatedly brought to the notice of every sensitive soul.
Hence even in Galande Sir's presentation, all the usual suspects, poverty, structural inequities, caste discrimination and farmer suicides, were all present.
I would have liked to open up a deeply connected but slightly different scope/area. The most obvious fall-out of the terrible rural distress is the huge internal migration. To Pune daily in droves come such rural labourers or even farmers with marginal land-holding.
