HYDERABAD: For yet another year, the agricultural operations in the State have commenced without either an action plan or a contingency strategy as the State government discontinued the practice of releasing its annual agriculture action plan two years ago. According to a highly placed source in the Agriculture Department, its action plan is not going to be made public this year too.
Speaking to the TNIE on condition of anonymity, the source informed that the decision not to prepare the plan has been taken by the decision-maker, and that “making the fertilisers and seeds for all kinds of contingencies” is the real action plan, which has been ensured. The source also said that if the targets set by the State government in its action plan can’t be met, it will make the “estimation of the agriculture department look bad”.
The source assures that the agriculture minister and the chief minister both being farmers, will come up with the right plans and strategies, which will ultimately benefit the farmers. However, farmers’ organisations see something more to it than meets the eye in the State government’s decision.
According to Kanneganti Ravi, leader of Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), there has been a huge discrepancy in the agriculture data between what is being claimed and what is being achieved. He said that the data on the area of cultivation has not been accurate in the past due to various factors. One of the factors is that the Assistant Statistical Officer (ASO) position in many mandals has been lying vacant, and due to this, even the Directorate of Statistics and Planning has also stopped releasing any data. There are also discrepancies between the data being recorded by the Agriculture Department and the Directorate of Statistics and Planning, he notes.
To back his claim, he points to the Marketing department’s website, where there is either very little or no data available on how much cess is collected from private traders for purchasing produce directly from the farmers. “Every procurement, whether it happens in the market yards, procurement centres or at the farmer’s fields, needs to be recorded and cess needs to be levied by the marketing department. No data on their website either shows that they are not collecting the cess, or the traders are not paying it,” he said.
“After the introduction of the Dharani revenue portal, there are so many lands that used to be agricultural lands, which have been converted for other purposes. However, people are still claiming Rythu Bandhu benefits for those lands. So, when the question is raised about the total extent of agricultural land, and how many acres of crops are really being grown, there will be a difference that the State government wouldn’t be able to explain to the questioning authority (Centre). To put a full stop to the question they may have taken the decision not to release the action plan after 2021-22,” he observes.
