Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Friday appealed to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “immediately” come to the rescue of the beleaguered farmers who have suffered extensive damage to their crops following unseasonal rains and other vagaries of weather in the region.
Badal, in a letter to the Prime Minister, also drew his attention towards burning and extremely sensitive issue of the beleaguered farmers to bail them out from the current crisis thereby recasting the government policies drastically to regenerate farm economy with a long term agricultural policy re-orientation.
“The situation is extremely grave and dangerous. I earnestly and most humbly request, even beg, the Prime Minister to accord the highest priority to the most urgent task of saving the farmers of the country. I request him to take all stakeholders in agriculture, including farmers, the state Government, the farm economists and scientists on board, to arrive at a permanent solution to what is being described as number one challenge facing the country today,” he said.
“The farmers faced a tragedy of frightening proportions because of natural calamities on one hand and a long series of disastrous and anti-farmer policies of successive Congress governments at the Centre over the past 67 years on the other,” he said.
“For more than half a century, the brave and patriotic peasantry answered every distress call of the nation…But now, it is repayment time for the country. For the first time, the farmer needs his country to stand by him in his hour of extreme adversity and distress. The government must come to his rescue and repay a part of the debt which we always owe him,” said Badal.
Badal requested a comprehensive package of relief and compensation measures for farmers whose crop had been affected by recent rains, hail storms and windy conditions and other uncertainties climate in the region.
“The norms for providing relief under such conditions also need to be changed and brought in line with current ground realities and economic compulsions face by the farmers,” he added.
Badal pointed out that there was a dip in the quality of grain of wheat as a consequence of loss in its luster because of adverse weather conditions. “No cut should be applied to the price of farmer's yield on this account because he is not responsible for this adverse effect caused by natural calamity which is beyond his control,” he demanded.
Secondly, Badal said that there had been a fall in overall yield of crop this year. “As this too has been caused by reasons beyond the farmer's control, he should not be made to suffer for this. For this, the farmer should be paid adequate bonus to offset the loss in yield,” he said.
“All these factors that followed natural calamity has severely hit the farmer's economic plight. As a result, it is not possible for him to fulfil his loan recovery obligations. In view of this, the loan recovery from him should be deferred and staggered. Interest on these loans should be waived,” he added.
Badal further pleaded that in addition to these measures of immediate and short-term nature, the Centre must also put in place an economically viable approach and policy on minimum support price (MSP).
Making a strong plea for aligning MSP with overall price index, Badal said that failing this, the government should accept the recommendations of eminent farm economist Dr MS Swamitnathan and fix MSP to provide for 50 percent profit over farmer’s investment.
He urged to introduce subsidy-backed crop insurance scheme to help the farmers to deal with the natural calamities. He also requested definite long-term banking reforms to help the agricultural sector.