If their speeches at the inauguration of the four-day Progressive Punjab Agriculture Summit (PPAS) on Sunday are any indicator, parties from at least nine non-Congress-ruled States will use stagnation in the agricultural economy and the worsening plight of farmers as a major plank in the Lok Sabha elections.
Even as Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said the event was completely “non-political,” his counterparts from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh — Shivraj Chouhan, Raman Singh and Akhilesh Yadav — and president of the Telegu Desam Party, N. Chandrababu Naidu, along with the agriculture ministers from Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal as well as the president of the Rajasthan unit of the BJP, Ashok Parnami, blamed the Union government for ignoring the farming community.
Mr. Badal warned of a major law and order problem or even widespread anarchy if the situation was not attended to immediately.
“Save the farmer. By saving the farmer you would save the nation,” he said listing the problems of the farm sector, which could be resolved through a separate Agriculture budget on the lines of the Railways.
He also sought waiver of income-tax on agriculture allied activities, rationalisation of the Calamity Relief Fund, increase in subsidy and a special incentive package for the “Green Revolution” States to diversify their cropping patterns.
Starting his address with his favourite poem to pay tribute to the younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, who were buried alive in a brick wall during the Mughal rule, Mr. Chouhan accused the Centre of playing a fraud on the farming community as the existing system of deciding the Minimum Support Price (MSP) could not sustain the farmers. He called for a united effort from the State governments to protect the farmers who could not be left to the mercy of market forces. He warned that unless agriculture was made a profitable venture, India would not progress.
Mr. Raman Singh said the farmers lived up to the challenge, but the Centre was finding it difficult to store and distribute the foodgrains produced in the country. The MSP should be calculated after considering the actual cost of inputs and inflationary trends in the economy.
He said that Punjab and Chhattisgarh could undertake an exchange programme, where 1000 farmers from each State could stay and understand the way of life of their counterparts.
The TDP chief said the Central government had stopped taking interest in agriculture, which led to a rise in prices of essential commodities.
While Mr. Naidu favoured a political consensus for resolving issues related to farm economy, he sought revival of the proposal to interlink the rivers for better irrigation facilities.
