THANJAVUR: The Union Budget presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley evoked mixed responses from the farming community. While welcoming the announcement of fixing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at 1.5 times of input/production cost, the farming community was disappointed over non-announcement of farm loan waiver.
Mannargudi S Renganathan, the general secretary of Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association told The New Indian Express that overall it has been a welcome budget.
"The budget has been prepared with proper care," he said while pointing out the scheme to convert 22,000 Rural Haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) and government's plan to strengthen physical infrastructure using MGNREGA and other Government schemes.
These GrAMs will be exempted from regulations of Agriculture Product Marketing Committees (APMC) and will provide farmers facility to make a direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers. An Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund which would be set up with a corpus of Rs 2000 crore for developing and upgrading agricultural marketing infrastructure in the 22,000 Grameen Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) is a welcome one, he added.
Renganathan also welcomed the allocation of Rs 1,290 crores for bamboo mission and said Bamboo could be promoted as an eco-friendly building material.
"The push for Farmers Producers Organisations (FPO) is also good and the Government should treat the FPOs on par with farmers and give priority in buying products like seeds from FPOs for distribution under Government schemes", he added.
The veteran farmer said the Government should devise a separate insurance scheme for farm labourers to meet any eventualities.
P S Masilamani, the state secretary of Tamil Nadu Farmers association pointed out the BJP in its 2014 election manifesto itself promised to implement the M S Swaminathan led National Commission of Farmers (NCF) to ensure the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at 50 per cent over and above the production cost.
"Now the Government has announced one of the committee recommendations without naming the commission report. It also failed to implement the recommendation of reduced interest rate for agriculture," he said.
He also pointed out the production cost varies across the districts and the MSP should not be fixed from Delhi and the cost of cultivation should be calculated by a Price fixing committee at a state level, with inputs from districts, which should also have farmers as its members.
The farmers' leader, however, welcomed Rs 10,000 crore corpus for Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FAIDF) and an Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF).
No loan-waiver disappoints farmers
The silence of the budget over waiver of farm loans had disappointed the farmers. Sundara Vimalnathan, the district secretary of Cauvery Farmers protection association said farm loan waiver is must to stop the suicide of the farmers. "By increasing the target for farm loans from Rs 10 lakh crores to Rs 11 lakh crores the Government only make the farmers more and more debt-ridden", he said.
Hence the farm waiver should be the first step for improving the farmers' lives.
He also pointed out no pension scheme for farmers and farm labourer has been announced in the budget. Sami Natarajan, the district secretary of Tamil Nadu Farmers association said the BJP had announced it would increase the farmers' income by double in its manifesto itself and failed to do so in the last three and half years. He also pointed out the missing loan waiver scheme in the budget and absence of 4 per cent interest for farm loans recommended by the National Commission of Farmers.