Demands Centre to liberalise trade in agricultural commodities to help ryots
Blaming the ''faulty'' exim policy for the farmers’ woes, Lok Satta Party founder and national president Jayaprakash Narayan on Thursday wanted the Centre to liberalise trade in agricultural commodities to help the distressed farmers get remunerative price for their produce.
“It is not because of natural calamities, but because of fixing of quotas and stop to exports arbitrarily by the Centre that the farmers are in deep trouble,” he said while taking part in the 114th birth anniversary of Acharya N.G.Ranga, the veteran Parliamentarian, at Ranga Bhavan here.
Duty on imports
“It will be a win-win situation for all concerned if 10 per cent duty is imposed on edible oil and seeds imports and the revenue generated is given to farmers as incentive to boost oilseeds production,” he explained.
Thus the nation could attain self-sufficiency in edible oil and save precious foreign exchange on the one hand and ensure a remunerative price for the growers on the other, he said, adding that the plight of Bengal gram growers was due to imports from Australia and other countries.
Farmers should be allowed to sell their produce anywhere within the country and abroad, he said and referred to the agitation taken up by his party in support of paddy growers to sell BPT variety in neighbouring Karnataka and Maharashtra.
‘Hangman’s noose’
Stating that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) had turned out to be a “hangman's noose for ryots”, he said the scheme should be dovetailed with agriculture to create permanent assets in rural areas.
He suggested that the wage employment scheme should be used to improve the drainage system in the Krishna delta which was responsible for the floods in Western Krishna Delta in Prakasam district recently.