Opinion TOP honours

If the farm is the TOP priority, would the prioritisation not gain efficiency, and the process brevity, if everything about agriculture were reduced to capital letters?

Following the Prime Minister’s declaration that the TOP priority in agriculture is “tomato, onion, potato”, Twitter has come up with a diagnosis of SAD — Serious Acronym Disorder, which is preferable to the cheerless Seasonal Affective Disorder. He is naturally buoyant, whether in speech or text (his new book on school education is just out) and the spirit of India is moved to build on his efforts. If the farm is the TOP priority, would the prioritisation not gain efficiency, and the process brevity, if everything about agriculture were reduced to capital letters? The word FARM itself could be a promotional acronym — Farinaceous Augmentation for Rapid Monetisation, promising quick money for farmers. It was always staring us in the eye, but we did not see it for narrowness of vision and smallness of spirit.

Let us be expansive, then, and discover what lies, unsuspectedly and acronymously, in field and fallow. GUAR, the legume prized by the fracking industry, is obviously a contraction of GUARanteed, which accurately describes the earnings of guar farmers. DFI (Doubling Farmers’ Income) may soon outshine it, operating through MSPs enhanced to 1.5 times production cost — which would spell Maximised Soil Potentials, after the need for minimum support prices withers away under the pitiless sun of achhe din. Neem-Coated Urea or NCU must remain, of course, but the relation between the signifier and the signified may be radically altered.

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TOP challenged our minds, but BOTTOM now invites our attentions. B is clearly for Bamboo, which the finance minister wielded to political effect in his budget speech, but the meaning of the other alphabets is still hidden in the mists of time. To a nation freshly energised by TOP, making sense of BOTTOM must serve as a tantalising lure, drawing us towards a future conclusion.