A close friend of mine owns a chikoo farm on the outskirts of Bombay and has been complaining about it for as long as I have known him. He struggles with managing the people responsible for taking care of the trees, explains what it costs to ensure a healthy crop, fights off encroachers who break in every other month and gets no response from local police in the event of a theft. He recently found out that while he was being paid a measly R6 for every kilo of the fruit, the man responsible for transporting it to the city was selling it for R35, pocketing the difference without having to concern himself about any of the hard work involved.

"How is this fair?" my friend asks in despair, whenever we have a conversation. It plays on his mind all the time and he worries about the future of the farm. He doesn't rely upon income from those trees to survive, but his question often bothers me on the rare occasion when a farmer appears on television or within the confines of a newspaper. I wonder how they survive without the luxury of any other means of making a living. At times like these, their protests suddenly make sense.