Farmers in the delta region have expressed apprehension over the fruits of the inter-ministerial Central drought assessment team’s visit to the State. They say that in granting the compensation, the Centre must not restrict source of funding to just the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) and must expand that to ensure that the suffering farmers were adequately compensated. Besides, they seek better transparency and accountability on the part of the teams that come on study tours.
The State government has submitted a detailed presentation to the Centre seeking ₹39,565 crore from the NDRF for extending grant to farmers who suffered crop loss arising from the failure of the south-west monsoon and the north-east monsoon as also due to inadequate flow of water in the Cauvery.
The team must treat the shock deaths of farmers as equal to suicides and extend compensation accordingly, says Mannargudi S. Ranganathan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Cauvery Delta Farmers’ Welfare Association. The demand for compensation for paddy crop loss at ₹25,000 is justified as the banks had fixed ₹. 30,000 as the scale of finance for the crop, he adds.
Area shrinks
The net sown area under samba and thalady paddy as also foodgrains and oilseeds crops this year has come down to 15.08 lakh hectares compared to 21.42 lakh hectares the previous year. That itself points to the steep drop in total production.
Already, the direct sown paddy fields have been wiped out completely in the delta districts while the transplanted crops dependent on Cauvery waters have withered. Around three lakh acres were under pump set irrigation but those farmers are now registering a poor yield of 700 kg to 1,000 kg an acre against the normal yield of 1,800 to 2,100 kg an acre.
Considering the situation, we want all types of cultivation of paddy in the delta region to be treated eligible for input subsidy as per NDRF norms as the yield will be less than 33 per cent, says Cauvery Dhanapalan, vice-president of the Tamil Nadu Farmers' Consortium.
At the same time, the NDRF input subsidy compensation amount for crop loss is ₹ 6.800 an hectare for rain-fed crops, ₹13,500 an hectare for irrigated crops and ₹18,000 an hectare for perennial crops. This is a paltry sum and the Centre must take the reality into account and increase the compensation amount to ₹ 30,000 an acre, farmers urge.
Huge demand
The Centre is not allocating sufficient funds to the NDRF in its annual budgets to meet the burgeoning demands of the States suffering natural calamities that strike them. The NDRF allocation in 2016-17 budget is a mere ₹6,450 crore. The Tamil Nadu government itself is seeking ₹ 39,565 crore, not to speak of the demands put in by the other States and union territories.
The Centre had allocated ₹23,346 crore to the States for the 10 years between 2002-03 and 2011-12. But the annual crop loss amounted to ₹40,000 crore to ₹50,000 crore annually. How could the Centre meet the genuine demands of the suffering States from a small purse? Asks Arupathy P. Kalyanam, general secretary, Federation of Farmers' Associations of Cauvery Delta.
Mr. Kalyanam, reflecting the voice of the delta farmer, raises that very valid and relevant question and added that that it was why the farmers were demanding better transparency in the field working and crop loss calculation, as also the loss assessment estimation, of the teams that undertake the study.
