Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will inaugurate ‘Rythu Vedika’ sheds of the government aimed to help farmers organise themselves for a wide range of benefits at the mandal headquarters village of Kodakandla in Jangaon district on Satruday afternoon.
He will visit a forest in the vicinity and address a public meeting to explain the conceptualisation of the vedikas. Members of farmers coordination committees at village, mandal and district levels in erstwhile Warangal will attend.
The president of State-level farmers coordination committee Palla Rajeswara Reddy told The Hindu that the vedikas were an added facility provided to farmers after investment support, life insurance of ₹ 5 lakh and 24x7 free power supply. They were places where they could share best practices in agriculture and listen to scientists and officials.
A release of the CMO said the government proposed construction of 2,601 Rythu Vedikas in the State for ₹ 572.22 crore with each unit costing ₹ 22 lakh. Of this amount, the agriculture department will contribute ₹ 312.12 crore at ₹ 12 lakh per unit as its share and the balance ₹ 260.10 crore at ₹ 12 lakh per unit will be pooled from Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme funds.
The 2,601 Rythu Vedikas will include 2,462 in rural and 139 in urban clusters which may or may not have gram panchayats. There were 74 clusters having the gram panchayats and 65 without them. Twenty-two donors in rural areas and two in urban areas bore the full construction cost. As many as 139 vedikas came up on donated land. The construction of 1,951 sheds was completed while work was in progress in 650 others.
The government had initiated construction of the vedikas in all agriculture extension extension officers clusters. They were the first of the kind in the country envisaging platforms to motivate farmers and help them attain higher income levels. The vedikas will help government gather information on ground-level problems in farming and formulate strategies to overcome them.
The construction of Rythu Vedikas was taken up under the guidance, supervision and monitoring by District Collectors as per the design communicated by Panchayat Raj department. They include two rooms and two toilets with a plinth area of 2,046 sq ft. An amount of ₹350 crore was earmarked in the budget estimates of agriculture department for 2020-21.
