There is no end to the woes of the Tamil Nadu farmers. It ranges from non-availability of water for irrigating the paddy fields and scarcity of fertilizers and labour to work in the farms. The frequent interactions with farmers in most of the districts across the State yielded information which is not music to the ears of the authorities concerned.
Even as they expressed their gratitude to the Union Finance Minister who has set apart Rs 15 lakh crore exclusively for farm loan, farmer leaders live RV Giri, president, Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations (CIFA) ask the authorities to ensure that the farm loans reach the hands of the needy farmers. “There is no system as on today, at least in Tamil Nadu, to ensure that the loans reach the needy farmers,” said Giri.
But the most shocking disclosure made by Giri as well as Kattamannarkoil Kannan, secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers Association, is that farmers in Tamil Nadu do not get the Minimum Support Price announced by the Centre. Though the Centre had declared a MSP of Rs 1,815/- per quintal for paddy for the year 2019-2020, Tamil Nadu farmers have not received any figure in the close vicinity of the Government rate. “The Direct Purchase Centres set by the State Government are far away from the villages and the paddy fields. The farmers do not have the transport mechanism to carry the paddy to the DPCs. Even if they manage to do it, the bureaucrats and employees manning the DPCs ask money ranging from Rs 10 to Rs 100 per bag per person. What we get is far below the price announced by the Government,” said Kannan and Arupathi Kalyanam, another farm leader from Nagapattinam.
The State Government officials, as usual, denied and dismissed the ‘charges’ and ‘allegations’ as ‘baseless’ made by the farmers and farm leaders. But the farmers were unanimous in their contention that the MSP was meant for reading in news papers and the reality was something different.
According to Kannan and Giri, the DPC officials churn out a number of reasons not to accept the paddy brought to them. “They say that the moisture content in the paddy bags are more than prescribed by the government agencies and hence not acceptable. The poor and illiterate farmers are left helpless by these arguments,” said Kannan.
Kalyanam said that unless the Centre has a fool-proof mechanism for disbursing the MSP, the farmers would continue to be at the mercy of government employees as well as traders.
“The hike in amount set apart for farming sector would yield the results only if the government has the technical knowhow to monitor whether the farmers are benefitted individually.
We have been pleading with the Government for the implementation of the MS Swaminathan Commission Recommendations which had asked the Government to incorporate the cost of production and a fifty per cent profit in the final Minimum Support Price of the commodities. This would have helped the farmers to double their income. The Swaminathan Commission Report was submitted to the Centre in 2006,” said Kalyanam who has launched a new movement by name Self Sufficient Green Villages Movement which focusses on ‘swadeshi self reliance economic policies’ to make India a Five trillion Dollar economy soon.