In one of his finest pieces, Ravikiran sums up a host of problems that plague rural India in the way only he can do.

No, please don’t give me excuses for why you do not support lifting this restriction fully. I have heard those and I don’t care. I don’t care for what your theoretical ideal of village life is. These are the facts. 60% of our people are working on an activity that contributes only 30% to the GDP. There are more farmers than needed, producing more food than can be consumed, using land less efficiently than necessary. There really is no way to get a better income for the farmers without making food more expensive for the poor. Don’t try to juggle the numbers. There really is no way. The only way out is for us to have fewer farmers working more productively on less land. But the rules you are supporting make it tougher for the transition from agriculture to industry to take place gracefully. [.] Corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and land sharks derive their power from this rule. Industrialist prefer to grab land through politicians rather than buy it and leftists use the opportunity to extract their pound of flesh in the name of protecting the interests of the poor.

Let’s see what the socialists respond to this. If they respond at all.

Oh, by the way, TOI also means The Other India. Not that there’s any difference between the original TOI and the bleeding-heart blog.