While the Telangana government has, once again, listed agriculture as one of its priorities in its annual Budget, announcing a total allocation of Rs 24,439 crore for the sector, reading through the Budget document has been a challenge because of the large discrepancies in numbers. In particular, while the Budget at a Glance document lists allocations for major schemes such as Rythu Bharosa (Rs 18,000 crore), paddy bonus (Rs 1,800 crore) and Indiramma Atmeeya Bharosa (Rs 600 crore), the numbers in the departmental allocations are significantly different. We hope that a prompt reconciliation and explanation will be released, especially since, with the Budget, the devil lies in the details.
In last year’s Budget, it was understandable that the largest share of Rs 32,000 crore for agriculture was towards the guarantees — particularly the loan waiver and Rythu Bharosa.
The loan waiver of Rs 20,616 crore implemented within a year is certainly commendable compared to the five-year-long loan waiver fiasco of the previous government. However, the present administration still needs to address a large number of grievances from farmers who were denied the waiver.
The biggest failure of the Congress has been with respect to the Rythu Bharosa. By not implementing its guarantee of including tenant farmers and not imposing a limit on the eligible number of acres per owner, the scheme is simply an extension of the BRS’s Rythu Bandhu with all its flaws.
Additionally, the Budget speech disappoints by not even indicating an intention to recognise the 22 lakh tenant farmers of Telangana. As for landless agricultural workers, the government did keep its promise by initiating the Indiramma Atmeeya Bharosa.
But its budgetary allocation of Rs 413.52 crore means that the support of Rs 12,000 per household will go to 3.44 lakh beneficiaries. Given that there are 34.52 lakh active MGNREGS job card holders in Telangana, it is surprising that only 10% of them are eligible for the scheme. Surely, the proportion of landless households is much higher.
What we expect from the government in its second year is that it should look at what the farmers require beyond the election guarantees. The crop insurance scheme was allocated Rs 981 crore last year but was not initiated.
The present Budget allocates the same amount again, but this time the farmers need crop insurance to be initiated immediately for the upcoming Kharif season. The allocation to the Rythu Bima remains the same as last year, which means that the election promise to extend the scheme to landless agricultural workers remains unfulfilled.
Most importantly, several other schemes required to boost agriculture in the state have been starved of funds due to the cash-heavy guarantee schemes.
This is evident in the paltry allocations for important schemes like Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (Rs 34 crore), farm mechanisation (Rs 25 crore), soil health and fertility management (Rs 5.4 crore), crop diversification (Rs 0.2 crore) and National Mission on Natural Farming (Rs 1.6 crore).
Increasing state allocations to these schemes would bring in a larger share of centrally sponsored funds too.
In short, this Budget is a stark reminder that on the one hand, the government needs to pay attention to the unfulfilled promises related to tenant farmers, agricultural workers and crop insurance, and on the other hand, it needs to develop a comprehensive agricultural policy and action plan and look beyond the guarantees.
Development and sustainability of agriculture would need investing in many critical areas such as crop diversification, market infrastructure, soil health, farm mechanisation and incentivisation of ecological agriculture. Significant impact can be achieved with a few hundred crores invested in each of these, which the state can clearly afford considering the tens of thousands of crores going into the guarantees.