VIJAYAWADA: Contrary to the TDP government’s claim that the farmers of the state are a happy lot today, they seem to be rather a disgruntled lot and quite unhappy with the government’s alleged apathy towards the agriculture sector during the last one year of its rule.
This became apparent from the speeches of several farmer leaders at a roundtable ‘Farmers’ Problems - One Year Rule - Review’, organised by the Rythanga Samakya and Bharathiya Kisan Sangh, here on Tuesday. They voiced their unhappiness mainly over some irrigation projects and lack of proper support from the government and banks.
“Six months ago, we all met at a similar roundtable to discuss the fallout of the Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme and had lodged our protests in different ways since then. However, there seems to have been no effect whatsoever on the government, which is continuing with its own agenda that has neither inputs from the farmers nor is in their interest”, Y Nagendranath, president of Rythanga Samakya, alleged.
He minced no words to say that the government had failed to bail out the farmers from the crisis they faced today, but had on the other hand only added to their woes with its questionable decisions in regard to the agriculture sector and by reneging on its earlier promises to them. He reiterated that the Pattiseema scheme would spell the doom of the Polavaram project.
Jalagam Kumaraswamy and G Rambabu of Bharatiya Kisan Sangh pointed out that the scale of finance fixed for the farmers’ loan waiver scheme had only pushed the farmers into crisis. The conditions imposed in the implementation of the scheme had only made matters worse, with no banks coming to extend loans like before. Though the government had set up a Farmers’ Empowerment Commission and launched the Agriculture Mission, they had proved to be of no use to the farmers, they averred.
CPI Rythu Sangham leader Ravula Venkanna said the present crisis in the field of agriculture was the culmination of several questionable policies of the present and past governments. “Though a farmer has to invest more for crop cultivation now, he does not get remunerative prices for his produce with the government’s failure to ensure a proper Minimum Support Price for the same. The government’s decisions pertaining to land acquisition for the new capital are not in the interest of the farmers. In the past, the government took away their land in the name SEZs and today it is taking away their land in the name of development”, he charged while wondering why the government needed so many lakhs of acres of farmland.
Konaseema Rythu Sangham president Brahmananda Reddy said that while the problems of the farmers kept on increasing solutions were evading them.
Agreeing with him, Vijayakumar of the Lok Satta said the Chief Ministers of both AP and Telangana, instead of addressing the problems at hand, were instigating differences between the people of the two Telugug-speaking states in pursuit of their own selfish agendas. Another farmer leader sought to know why the government had failed to implement the promised Swaminathan Commission recommendations.
On the issue of land pooling and woes of farmers in the capital region, farmer leader M Seshagiri Rao said that the state government was acting against the Constitution and wondered how it could bring in different Acts to forcibly acquire land from the farmers, that too without paying them proper and adequate compensation. Expressing concern over the lack of unity among the farmers to protect their rights, Rao said it was high time that they set their differences aside and unitedly fought against anti-farmer policies of the government. He also criticised the people’s representatives, especially Guntur MP G Jayadev, for not supporting the farmers of the capital region.
APCC spokesperson and Krishna Delta Parirakshana Samiti convener K Shivaji demanded that both the AP and Telangana governments refrain from constructing the proposed irrigation projects - Pattiseema and Palamuru Lift Irrigation Schemes -- as they had no permissions for the same.
RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY ROUNDTABLE
