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Friday 1 February 2019

Modi's Rs 6000 for farmers no match to Odisha's Kalia and Telangana's Rythu Bandhu

interim budget 2019 Narendra modi
Photos: Reuters and PTI

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Telangana's Rythu Bandhu offers better support to farmers by giving Rs 10,000 per acre
  • Odisha offers Rs 25,000 for a farm family over five seasons to small and marginal farmers
  • Telangana and Odisha can rejoice as much of the funds will now be sourced from the centre's scheme
Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao is sitting pretty and has reason to gloat over the fact that his pioneering Rythu Bandhu (RB) investment support scheme for farmers is now being taken nationwide.
While RB offers to all farmers, excluding tenant farmers, Rs 10,000 per acre a year, what the NDA has proposed in the Interim Budget 2019 is only Rs 6,000 per acre a year. Besides, this is limited to small and marginal farmers.
Under the scheme called Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, the amount of Rs 6,000 will be transferred into bank accounts of farmers holding up to two hectares of land in three equal instalments.
This cash-support scheme, in a bid to provide relief to the distressed farm sector, will cost the exchequer a staggering Rs 75,000 crore.
"This is a poor imitation of the path breaking Rythu Bandhu scheme," said TRS working president KT Rama Rao.
With a more liberal scheme in place, KCR has little to worry except for the demand from tenant farmers that they be brought under the ambit of the investment support scheme turning shrill.
The RB, contrary to the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, extends the cash grant to all farmers irrespective of the size of the land holding. An additional gain for KCR is that Rs 6,000 of the Rs 10,000 that Telangana gives at present can now be forked from what the Centre is offering from the new financial year.
In Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has introduced the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme, This offers direct benefit cash transfer of Rs 25,000 for a farm family over five seasons to small and marginal farmers.
This is to support farmers so that they can buy inputs like seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and also use it towards labour and other investments. This is being implemented from the Rabi season of 2018-19.
Farmers leaders are however sceptical about the Kisan Samman Nidhi. "A smart announcement from a smart politician," said P Chengal Reddy, adviser to the Confederation of Indian Farmers Association.
"Narendra Modi has done this only because it is an election year. Farmers do not perceive him as friendly and this was an easier way out for him when there is a growing demand for loan waiver across the country. Issues of tenant farmers and those who are landless have not been addressed."
Reddy emphasised that more substantive agricultural reforms are needed, beginning with measures like including agriculture in the Concurrent List of the Constitution and an exclusive Union Budget for Agriculture considering its complexities.
The Kisan Samman Nidhi is expected to cover about 12 crore farmers while the Rythu Bandhu benefitted about 58 lakh farmers during the Kharif season alone.
While the Centre has allocated Rs 75,000 crore for the scheme, Telangana is going to spend Rs 15,000 crore under Rythu Bandhu, much of which will now come from the Centre.

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