Chaos reigns supreme at agro fair inauguration

RAJKOT: The Agro Vision-2003 fair ran into trouble right from the inauguration ceremony on Wednesday by vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. Chaos ruled supreme during the two-hour inaugural function and most of the audience had walked away by the time Shekhawat stood up to address the gathering. The fair turned out to be a flop show for the organisers.The inauguration, which was delayed by over two hours, began on a noisy note with many in the audience protesting against the seating arrangement for the VVIPs. At one stage, the audience even threatened to stage a walkout, forcing the authorities to hastily re-arrange the seats and ask the VVIPs to shift to another place . The lengthy speeches by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Union minister of state for human resources and the convenor of the fair Vallabh Kathiria, and by the Union labour minister Saheb Singh Verma left the audience restless, and most walked away before the vice-president had a chance to speak. In fact, Kathiria and Verma's speeches, were frequently interrupted by shouts from the audience. Seeing the audience leave the venue in droves, the authorities made an announcement asking the people to stay seated and listen to the vicepresident speak, as he was also a son of the soil. However, this had no effect on the crowd. The vice-president's family members, who were also present, had to seek police help to remove the volunteers in front of the VVIP gallery as they were blocking their view. In his speech, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat said, It has been found that national planning cannot be based on mere economic development. Development can only be attained when there is equal distribution of the national wealth. He also expressed concern about the drop in agriculture yield as compared to the rising population. He said there were six crore farmers who had less than one hectare of agriculture land at their disposal, with this kind of a situation, how much can a farmer produce? He added that this question needs to be addressed on a priority basis. In fact, agriculture experts must advise the farmers to go in for alternate cropping pattern, and instead of cultivating food grain they must go in for crops that would give them economic prosperity, Shekhawat said. In his address, Chief Minister Narendra Modi said, Farmers in Gujarat are strong enough to face any challenge, but are rendered helpless when nature plays truant. To meet the challenges posed by nature, it is time we go in for water harvesting and change the cropping pattern.