I had known Vasant in a different avatar ? as a student at the MIT School of Government in Pune, a prestigious institute that trains young men and women to take up leadership roles in politics and administration. I was invited by Rahul Karad, the school’s young founder, to give a lecture there about two years ago. Vasant could have chosen more alluring career options after graduating from Pune, but he decided, instead, to mobilise the farmers of his district.

India needs such young leaders, who are not tempted by fat five-figure salaries to live a “good life”, but are fired by a desire to do something to change the blighted lives of millions of fellow-Indians.

My interactions with the farmers from Telangana reinforced a belief that catastrophic developments are taking place in Indian agriculture, about which our ruling economic and political elite neither knows nor cares. Small and medium farmers, especially in rain-fed areas like Telangana, are getting debt-ridden? and, as a consequence of which, are being dispossessed of their meagre landholdings ? at an alarming rate. With agriculture becoming less and less remunerative, even big farmers in these areas are no longer in a position to remain wealthy solely on the basis of farm income. No wonder, many are turning to the real-estate business.

Here are some of the grievances I heard from the Telangana farmers, which, with some variations, are common to their counterparts elsewhere in the country:

• With the water-table going down, farmers are forced to dig their bore wells deeper, incurring higher costs

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