BENGALURU: Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s ‘Raitha Belaku Yojane’, an ambitious income guarantee project aimed at benefiting at least 70 lakh farmers, is likely to take a hit in the coalition government’s first budget which will be presented on July 5. This is because Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy is now attempting to balance fiscal prudence and farm loan waiver.
The scheme, with a budgetary outlay of Rs 3,500 crore, was announced in Siddaramaiah’s last budget presented just four months ago. The JD(S)-Congress coalition government has barely made any effort to implement the scheme which is emulated from neighbouring Telangana. Highly placed sources said the government is yet to define the scheme guidelines and hence no beneficiary has been selected till date.
If sources close to Agriculture Minister N H Shivashankar Reddy are to be believed, though the scheme was discussed in the budget preparatory meeting with the CM, there was no clarity on whether it will be continued in the next budget.
The project
The project was introduced in the last budget of the previous Congress government ‘to give direct income assistance’, thereby ‘mitigating the miseries of dry land farmers’. Under the scheme, farmers growing rain-fed crops will be given an assistance of `5,000 per hectare up to a maximum of Rs 10,000. The amount will be directly transferred to bank accounts of farmers.
A joint director of agriculture told The New Indian Express that though the government has announced the scheme, there has been no official notification regarding its implementation. “Funds for such schemes are released quarterly. However, till date, neither guidelines nor funds have reached the district centres,” the official said.
Another joint director of the department said that implementation will only take place after the notification. “We don’t know how the scheme will work. Guidelines for selecting beneficiaries, details on the mode of benefit transfer and the financial approval for the project is still awaited,” the official said.
Sources close to the Agriculture Minister said that though the minister was keen on continuing the project, the fiscal challenge before Kumaraswamy in terms of farm loan waiver might force him to junk it.
Kodihalli Chandrashekar of Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha said though the project is helpful, farmers will be better off with loan waiver. “Though the scheme will provide a fixed income of a small scale, loan waiver will help in reducing the stress suffered by farmers due to loans that have compounded over the years,” he said.