Budget 2010 –FM ignored five million Drought hit Vidarbha Farmers and 50,000 Dying Farm Widows

Budget 2010 –FM ignored five million Drought hit Vidarbha Farmers and 50,000 Dying Farm Widows

Nagpur -26^th feb. 2010

Five million drought hit Farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra today disappointed when their plea to Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to provide more funds to restore their rural system and also control the massive corruption that is prevalent in this region due agrarian crisis has been completely ignored .

“Leave apart the special relief package as given to drought hit budelkhand (U.P.), shri Pranab Mukherjee has not even consider to provide any relief to dying 50,000 farm widows of region .the announcement in budget are peanut as concession in interest rate on crop loan is ridiculous as due to severe crop loss in drought ,all pending crop loan is being reconstructed ,more direct subsidy to micro nutrient fertilizer is also a hoax.

There is no plan in budget to address the on going agrarian crisis and isuue of food security” Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) president Kishor Tiwari informed in press release today.

“we were expecting special treatment to vidarbha as earlier prime minister relief package failed in the region and I.C.A.R recently Recommended that this region should be converted in to ‘PULSE CROP HUB’ but nothing has reflected in the budget ,we are disappointed” tiwari said

Earlier Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has demanded a special economic package of Rs300 billion in the new budget to save more than five million vidarbha farmers facing an agrarian crisis. In a letter to Mukherjee, VJAS president Kishor Tiwari had drawn the minister's attention to the pathetic conditions in Vidarbha, "which is now known as the farmers' suicide capital of India".

‘The Maharashtra government has spent over Rs3000 crore towards the irrigation backlog in the last three years and Prime Minister relief package of Rs 3750 crore followed by loan waivers failed to stop farmers suicides more over state has failed to address the basic issues of food security and health care", Tiwari added.

“Massive backwardness, lack of infrastructure and industrialisation coupled with regular power cuts and load shedding, tribal starvation, malnutrition and the complete failure of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the National Rural Health Mission has made Vidarbha "slaves of western Maharashtra and Mumbai", said a frustrated Tiwari in recent interview .

VJAS urged Smt.Sonia Gandhi intervention in the matter in order to save 5 million dying vidarbha farmers.