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Monday, May 12, 2008
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Jayalalithaa: restore farm subsidies

Special Correspondent

Threatens agitation against Centre

CHENNAI: AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on Sunday demanded the immediate restoration of agricultural subsidies to make farming economically viable.

In a statement here, she warned of a nation-wide agitation in 15 days to oust the Union government if it failed to address the issues of farmers and initiate measures to rein in the unprecedented rise in the prices of essential commodities.

Ms. Jayalalithaa said the removal of subsidies on agriculture resulted from blind adherence to the globalisation agenda and warned that the country would face an unprecedented famine if the farmers were not brought back to their occupation.

While developed countries like U.S. and Japan still doled out substantial subsidies to agriculturalists, Indian farmers were being deprived of these benefits on the pretext of adhering to the GATT and WTO protocols.

As a result, agriculture had become progressively unviable and thousands of farmers nation-wide had ended their lives. Tamil Nadu was witness to the tragic spectacle of sugarcane farmers setting fire to their produce rather than selling it at unviable prices, she said.

The AIADMK leader called for a ban on the export of commonly used or scarcely available commodities and a clamp down on the two main causes of price rise — online futures trading and hoarding. “Public declaration of stocks by traders had to be drastically reduced from the present 50,000 tonnes and the government machinery should be mercilessly used to bring out hoarded stocks that artificially escalated prices,” she said.

The Customs and Excise duties on petrol and diesel should be cut to bring down transportation costs, which inflated prices of all commodities, and restrictions should be imposed on the entry of huge business houses and Foreign Direct Investment in the retail sector, she said.

Criticising Finance Minister P. Chidambaram for failing to curb inflation, Ms. Jayalalithaa said his statements on the price rise were “conflicting and contradictory.”

Pointing out that the prices of all essential commodities — rice, salt, dhal, pulses, edible oil and vegetables — were on the rise, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the government economists who estimated the inflation to be 7.61 per cent had glossed over the fact that the calculation was based on the Wholesale Price Index. If one added the middlemen and retailer’s margins, the inflation was nearly 30 per cent.

And, as if to add insult to injury, the local bodies in Tamil Nadu, on the prodding of the DMK government, had been increasing property tax and water taxes arbitrarily, she alleged.

Responding to the government requesting cement producers to hold the price line, Ms. Jayalalithaa blamed the cement industry for holding the country to ransom in recent years by taking government land on nominal lease and exploiting nature’s limestone resources at practically no cost. “In the name of nation-building, it [cement industry] has been flouting pollution control norms and availing [itself] of concessional power and every other facility under the sun. For all the benefits it enjoys, it should be at beck and call of the government.” But this was not the case.

Prices of milk had shot up, public transport costs increased and real estate prices skyrocketed. As a result, rentals had doubled in metropolitan cities and major towns in the last six months. “At the centre of this price spiral, which can at very conservative estimates be put at 40 per cent, is the hapless common man.”

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