In its bid to bag the mandate of rural families to form the Government for the third time in the State, the Raman Singh Government has decided to speed up disbursal of paddy bonus, a touchy issue for Chhattisgarh, an agrarian State.
If everything goes according to the Government's scheme of things, in the next four months, each farmer out of over 10 lakh families will get his share in the Rs1,900 crore bonanza forked out by the Government in its recently proposed budget estimates.
Notably, the State Government it its 2013-14 budget announced the provision of Rs1,900 crore for paying bonus to farmers at the rate of Rs270 per quintal on every quintal of paddy procured from them during 2012 Kharif season. According to information provided by the Government in Assembly, over 71 million tonnes of paddy has so far been procured from over 10 lakh farming families in the State.
As per the declared rate of bonus of Rs270 per quintal, on an average, each family will net up Rs19,000 approximately in bonus, leave aside the real price of the paddy, official figure put which around
Rs9 thousand crore, on an
average Rs90,000 share for each families.
Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh, a shrewd politician as he is, was perhaps waiting for the opportune time to commission his 'Brahmashtra,' which could not have been better than a handsome gift to majority of farming families constituting roughly one third of the population. Moreover, paddy bonus has the potential not only to blunt the line of Opposition's criticism, but also deny it power the third time in succession. The State goes to Assembly polls later this year and the BJP regime is hopeful to make a
hat-trick.
Opposition Congress leaders, too, are wary of Raman's deadly armour as they simply do not miss to rake up the issue of Government denying farmers their bonus for the past three years. Chief minister Raman Singh terms it just a moral
gesture of the BJP Government aimed at lessening the miseries of farmers at a time when the farming input has gone up astronomically.