Caught in political wrangling

All the political parties are trying to woo the farmers in Telangana, but problems abound

Last month, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Congress and the BJP went all out to woo the disgruntled farmers of Telangana. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his Cabinet colleagues led a dharna in New Delhi on April 11 in support of the demand that the Centre procure paddy. The Congress brought in Rahul Gandhi to lead a farmers’ rally on May 6 at Warangal where it announced the ‘Warangal Declaration’. Not to lag behind, the BJP State president Bandi Sanjay’s three week-long padayatra has been devoted to exposing the TRS government’s “anti-farmer policies” and the failure of the former Congress government in completing pending irrigation projects.

The ‘Warangal Declaration’ assures a ₹2 lakh farm loan waiver at one go and an increase in paddy support price to ₹2,500 per quintal if the Congress is brought to power. It also promises investment support of ₹15,000 per acre per annum to both land owners and tenant farmers under the Indiramma Rythu Bharosa scheme. This is to replace the present Rythu Bandhu scheme. The TRS says the Warangal Declaration is nothing but a repeat of the State government’s existing schemes “with some changes here and there”.

Even after the April 11 protest, the Centre stood its ground and the State had no option but to procure the Rabi paddy. It procured 8.63 lakh tonnes of paddy worth ₹1,812 crore from 1,28,329 farmers till May 9. Of this, 7.59 lakh tonnes have been shifted to rice mills for custom milling as raw rice. The government has opened 5,299 procurement centres in 30 districts.

Agriculture Minister S. Niranjan Reddy admitted that there has been some delay in implementing crop loan waiver of up to ₹1 lakh per farmer in four years as promised in the 2018 Assembly election manifesto. This, he said, was mainly because of the impact of COVID-19 on the State’s revenue. Loan waiver of up to ₹1 lakh was implemented after the TRS’s victory in the 2014 polls, he pointed out.

The TRS sought to know from both the Congress and the BJP why no State under their rule is implementing schemes such as Rythu Bandhu and Rythu Bima.

At present, the major problem for Telangana farmers is the snail’s pace at which paddy procurement is progressing even as untimely rains have damaged crop in the farm fields and at procurement centres. The State government blames the Centre (Food Corporation of India) for lack of storage space. It says it is unable to move the custom milled rice from mills to godowns. While mills lack space to hold rice stocks on their own, godowns are filled with the previous season’s stocks.

While political parties are busy wrangling, organisations working for farmers say there is no policy framework to support the sector at the national level although States too have their responsibilities. “It is absurd that the Centre has no Agriculture Advisory Council. As a result, the farm sector suffers from the produce and perish syndrome,” says CIFA chief adviser P. Chengal Reddy. He says the government must make farmers globally competitive so that farming is more lucrative. Every agricultural commodity needs an action plan and a board at the national level to market the produce globally by bringing uniformity in quality, he says. “Problems include low productivity, high input costs and huge wastage. The government has to give incentives for farm exports,” he says.