Portrait of a Pleasant Peasant Placed on your Porch

Abstract

The peasants themselves never brought about the debate of tradition vs. modernity. They did not have any historical reason for doing so either. Instead, they kept themselves ‘updated’ for thousands of years, upheld inventing the then modern skillset and technology. Sometimes to increase production, sometimes to enhance nutrition or necessity, sometimes simply to reduce their labor. We do not need to be an expert agriculture historian to understand this simple fact. Take the example of paddy, the peasants preserved hundreds of its varieties; they discovered a variety that could maintain a balance with the increasing water level in the rainy season. The peasants did not even wait for television awareness programs to know about what the recent pro-‘sustainable’ agricultural scientists call as organic fertilizer. At the outset, it is important to clearly define what I mean as ‘peasants’.