The Odisha Dalit Adhikar Manch demanded here on Saturday that the Government adopt a special policy soon to provide farmland, loan and crop loss compensation to landless agriculture workers and sharecroppers.
leaders belonging to different political parties and farm workers’ orgnisaitons and intellectual made this demand while addressing a public meeting held under chairmanship of Manch State Manas Jena here.
Speakers like Manch’s Madhusudan Yadav, Prashant Mallick, CPI (Ml-liberation) lead Banshidhar Parida, CPI (Ml-Redstar) State secretary Sibaram and senior journalist Ramesh Mohanty lamented that the Agriculture Budget has no provisions for farm workers and sharecroppers and, hence, would not be of any help to real farmers.
They said that the farmers, who are committing suicide, are basically sharecroppers and vegetable growers. They take extreme steps in their lives when their crops are lost and they become unable to pay off debts they incur from private moneylenders at higher interest rates.
“Even after 65 years’ of Independence, landless farmers have not got land for failure in implementation of land reformation and consolidation programmes. Even most of them have not got homestead lands. They are worst-hit during natural calamities. lack of irrigation, storage and marketing facilities have only added to their woes. They are being forced to go other States in search of work,” they lamented.
They demanded that the State Government implement the Assembly Sub-Committee’s proposal for adoption of required laws to support farm workers and sharecroppers.