Irrespective of the party in power, a political slug fest between the Opposition and ruling parties is unveiled every year when paddy harvesting begins and the produce arrives at the agricultural markets in Telangana. This year it’s no different and with the procurement season coinciding with the election period, the issue has become more intense.
The war of words, particularly between the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the ruling Congress party, has taken off in advance this year with a large number of farmers experiencing crop loss this season due to withering of paddy and a few other crops owing to lack of water for irrigation and conversely, loss in some extent due to untimely rain, hails and gales a little earlier.
The State government, on its part, has got the crops loss due to untimely rain and put the extent of loss due to untimely rain at little over 15,000 acres and announced relief of ₹10,000 per acre as given by the previous government during the last Rabi season. However, the BRS has been demanding a relief of ₹25,000 per acre both for loss due to untimely rain and due to withering of standing crops, the same amount demanded by the Congress last year, when it was in the Opposition. This season, the Opposition BRS has made as one of its poll planks the crops loss due to lack of water for irrigation (withering). The party leaders including president K. Chandrasekhar Rao are taking up field visits meeting farmers before kicking off campaign.
As part of training guns on the Bhatratiya Janata Party (BJP) in the matter, the party is also raking up the past by reminding people how the Centre had refused to accept parboiled rice produced in Rabi season a couple of years back and how Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal told a delegation of Telangana Ministers who went to meet him on the issue to make people cultivate the habit of eating broken rice, when they brought it to Mr. Goyal’s notice that processing paddy produced in Rabi as raw rice would result in much higher quantity of broken grain/rice.
On the procurement of paddy this season, the BRS has been demanding that the State government speed up the process as “it’s going on at a snail’s pace” forcing farmers to approach traders and get lower price than minimum support price and also pay ₹500 per quintal bonus to paddy as promised. Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao went a step further and asked the farming community to “take up postcard campaign seeking bonus and speedy procurement”.
Minister for Civil Supplies N. Uttam Kumar Reddy refuted the BRS allegations on procurement and stated: “Our government has opened 6,919 purchase centres as on April 14 and procured 2.7 lakh tonnes paddy against only 335 centres opened last year by the same day last with procurement of only 233 tonnes”. He assured the farming community that the government would procure every grain that would arrive at the 7,149 purchase centres proposed.On the other hand, BJP is struggling hard to find itself in the issue by organising a few meetings and protests and trying to score a few points by announcing that the Centre has agreed to lift 30 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice produced in 2023-24 Kharif and Rabi seasons from Telangana.
Irrespective of every stakeholder party trying to utilise the situation in its favour, the core issue of withering of paddy in large tracts across Telangana due to lack of water for irrigation remains unaddressed as the parties shift gears into core politics as the May 13 polling day approaches faster.
