Doctor and Farmer: Question of Equality

Introduction

In society, doctors and farmers are considered two distinct professional groups. Doctors receive respect, prestige, and high status, while farmers are recognized as laborers, and their contribution is often overlooked. In reality, both professions are equally essential for the existence of society.

Education Issue

Becoming a doctor requires long institutional training. The journey includes medical knowledge, clinical practice, and research. Unlike agricultural knowledge passed down through generations, medical education is not easily accessible; therefore, obtaining it is challenging.

A farmer’s education, however, develops through generational experience. In an agriculture-based culture, farming knowledge is more readily acquired. Each generation passes on its knowledge, experiments, mistakes, and improvements to the next. Although a farmer’s continuous experiential education is informal, it is as important as a doctor’s formal education.

Comparison of Labor

A doctor applies intellectual knowledge, professional skills, and time to heal a sick person.

A farmer contributes not only physical but also intellectual labor. Planning sowing, predicting weather, testing soil, using new technologies, and pest control require considerable intellectual effort. Additionally, a farmer works hard physically every day to grow crops.

Contribution to Society

A doctor provides health to society. If someone falls ill, the doctor restores their health.

However, for a person to fall ill, they must first live, and the most fundamental requirement for life is food. Farmers produce this food. Therefore, the contributions of doctors and farmers are complementary; the absence of one renders the other’s work incomplete.

Call for Equality

Considering a “service-point” system, why should the evaluation of doctors and farmers be equal?

• Doctors provide health; farmers provide food.
• Both are indispensable to society.
• Both involve physical, mental, and intellectual effort.

Therefore, doctors and farmers should receive equal respect, recognition, and social status.

Conclusion

Doctors and farmers are not competitors; they are complementary for society. There can be no health without food, and no benefit of food without health. Only by giving both professions equal recognition can true social equality be established.

Author: Arun Ramchandra Pangarkar
Leader: Shramik Kranti Mission: Voice of the Poor