Farmers may have to get a smartphone and have access to the Internet to get the benefit of the support price announced for select agriculture produce.
Officers of the Agriculture Department are insisting that the farmers get a smartphone and install the ‘Bele Darshak’ application to keep a tab on the crop survey conducted by the government to avoid losing the benefit.
Recently, the government opened centres to procure paddy and ragi at support price. The support price has been fixed at ₹1,815 and ₹3,150 per quintal of paddy and ragi respectively.
Small growers, who want to sell their produce, have to register their names in advance at the centres with relevant documents.
Only those farmers, who grow paddy or ragi, as per the data recorded through the crop survey conducted by the department, are eligible to get the benefit.
But, many farmers could not register because the crop survey data, already with the procurement centres, did not match their claims.
This led to arguments between the farmers and the officers. The officers asked such farmers to install a mobile app and raise an objection to the crop survey data.
Rangaswamy, a farmer Koravangala, said he hardly uses his phone. “I don’t know how to install the application and get Internet. The government is making our life miserable,” he said.
The officers maintained that the application could be useful.
K. Madhusudan, Joint Director of Agriculture Department, said the discrepancies could be there in the survey data because of many factors. When the surveyor visited the plot, he could have wrongly registered the crop.
“However, the farmers can easily get it corrected with the help of the app. A supervisor will revisit the plot and verify the information and revise the data,” he said. When it was brought to his notice that many would not get access to mobile phones, the officer said the farmers also had an option to submit their objections at Raitha Samparka Kendra or the offices of Agriculture Assistants.
“The last day to register for selling at support price is February 28. So far, about 3,000 farmers have registered. They have sufficient time to raise objections,” he said.
H.R. Naveen Kumar, Hassan district president of Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha, alleged this was a trick by the government to minimise the number of beneficiaries.
“How can you expect farmers, who are already facing many problems, to purchase a smartphone, and install an app. This is inhuman. By minimising the number of beneficiaries through these tricks, it may well do away with the concept of support price itself soon,” he claimed.
