In an attempt to cover all those living in distress conditions and deprived of most of the basic facilities, the Government has decided to go on their marking exercise. To start with the villages, all the mukhias and village level representatives would be given the task to identify the destitute so that targeted planning can be done.
Hinting about the initiative Chief Minister Raghubar Das said that the drive would be in the line of ‘yojna banao abhiyan’ run massively last year. “The Government is working on the 2017-18 Budget which would be directed to poverty alleviation. We want to eliminate poverty from villages and for that all the mukhias would be tasked to identify poor in their respective villages. The exercise is going to start from January 20 across the State,” said the CM addressing annual credit seminar of NABARD on Friday.
He also called for special attention on farm sector and called on all the stakeholders to work together in order to double farm income by 2022. “After so many years since independence the farm sector and villages have not been on focus. Moreover, the villages are focal point of our economy. We have work for an ulgulan (uprising) to bring green revolution in Jharkhand since over 60 per cent of our population is dependent on agriculture,” added he.
The CM at the same time also expressed worry over the state of grain production in Jharkhand which is largely dependent on imports to meet its domestic demand. “Improving situation and direction of villages is the focus of this Government which can be done only by making villages and activities over there as center point. In this endeavour we need contribution from all the stakeholders such as banks, sakhi mandals, Government etc,” said the CM.
The State credit seminar for the year 2017-18 of NABARD for Jharkhand also presented a State Focus Paper that puts ‘doubling farmer income by 2022’ on the top. The focus paper also projected credit potential for the fiscal under priority sector at Rs 20648.80 crore that includes Rs 9523.94 crore under agriculture sector with 10.57 per cent jump over 2016-17.
Agriculture Secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni while lauding the improvement taken place in farm sector credit stressed over its diversification. “Agriculture has to be diversified for doubling the farm income. Activities like poultry, fishery, beekeeping etc are to be added together. Government is working towards commercial activities of the farmers that has not been the case thus far. Against farmers’ average capacity of credit of Rs 42000 nationally, in the State it is just Rs 26000,” said Kulkarni.