Onus on Rythu Samanvaya Samithis to ground schemes

Crop investment support to prevent farmers falling into debt trap, says CM

File photo of farmers with pattadar passbook and Rythu Bandhu cheques in Khammam District.

Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao has called upon the farmers coordination committee to play a critical role to ensure that new pattadar passbooks are distributed to the farmers under the ‘Rythu Bandhu’ scheme to provide crop investment support and implementation of insurance scheme for the farmers.

The crop investment scheme was meant to prevent farmers from falling into a debt trap and it was not for garnering votes in the elections, he made it clear in the meeting of district coordinators of farmers’ coordination committee here on Tuesday. “It is the responsibility of ‘Rythu Samanvaya Samithis’ to implement all these programmes successfully,” he said.

Price for produce

With adequate power supply, water supply, investment support, what the farmers would require now was supporting price for their agriculture produce, the Chief Minister said and added that the government was making efforts for that. As in Israel, farmers here should be encouraged to adopt modern agriculture techniques and government would send the district coordinators to Israel to learn the techniques adopted there, he said.

He gave several suggestions to the coordinators on how to educate the farmers, advise them on cropping pattern depending on market demand and soil category, regulated supply of agriculture produce to the market among other things.

Dismissive of the promise of Congress leaders to waive farmers’ loans to the tune of ₹2 lakh, Mr. Rao termed it a gimmick to get votes in the election.

The State’s revenues would simply not be sufficient to bear the additional burden of that promise after meeting the committed expenditure towards salaries, welfare schemes and debt servicing, he said.

He reminded the meeting that the TRS government fulfilled every promise made in the election manifesto for the welfare of farmers and had gone beyond the the manifesto and implemented many more schemes.

Second cheque

Addressing the meeting at Pragathi Bhavan attended by Deputy Chief Minister Mahmood Ali, Ministers Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Laxma Reddy, Rythu Coordination Committee Chairman and MP Gutha Sukhender Reddy and several MPs and officials of Chief Minister’s Office, he said the second instalment of cheques under Rythu Bandhu scheme would be given in November as announced.

There was a time when farmers led a life of dignity in Telangana region and farmers were in a position to help others but over the years due to lopsided policies in the combined State, agriculture sector was adversely affected and farmers suffered in all fronts, he said.

Government was committed to improve the lot of farmers in the new State of Telangana and accordingly initiated and implemented several schemes for benefit of farmers including waiver of loans worth ₹17,000 crore, construction of irrigation projects, timely distribution of fertilisers and seeds.

In addition, government distributed updated pattadar pass books, introduced investment support scheme of ₹8,000 per acre in two instalments and decided to provide life insurance cover of ₹5 lakh . The insurance bonds would be distributed from August 15.