Union Budget 2015: No Healing Touch to 3 Million Distressed Vidarbha Farmers-VJAS
28 February 2015
Once again new NDA Govt. has
failed to give any healing touch in his policy road map budget -2015 distressed
3 million dry land farmers which are growing cash crop like cotton and soybean
in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra as there is no announcement of fulfilling PM
Narendra Modi pre-poll promises on farm loan waiver and giving higher MSP
according to a proposed formula of investment plus 50 per cent returns as
indicated earlier that BJP is treating the issue of minimum support price (MSP)
and waiver of farm loans as a 'Kisan-Jumla' (empty election promise) as there
is no budgetary provisioning and plan to address the acute agrarian crisis with
focus on credit, cost and crop issues hence to stop farmers suicides, a key
farmers' advocacy group in the drought-prone Vidarbha region, Vidarbha Jan
Andolan Samiti (VJAS) said in a press statement.
This year the Maharashtra state
government officially declared that 60 per cent of its villages were facing a
"severe drought" of the century, last year, affecting almost 90 lakh
farmers in state. 23,811 of state's total 39,453 villages fall under this
category after complete kharif crop was damaged, there is international
recession in cotton as global market and demand has been dropped and this will
effect more than 40 million cotton farmers cultivating cotton in more than 12
million hector mostly dry land farmers hence union budget is talking big mega investment infrastructure and
long term credit but failed to address core issues of giving direct relief
package to these 40 million cotton farmers who are victims of global open
market economy and mismatched demand supply situation ,NDA has sidelined
the rural and agrarian crisis from its priority list When poor are demanding
food under universal PDS and farmers are killing themselves due to debt and
poor prices of agriculture produce,. This will make life of poor and farmer’s
miserable, VJAS president, Kishore Tiwari, added.
It was made clear earlier
Budget-2015 that NDA Govt. is not serious to address the core issue of crisis that
are better cost and credit as it was reflected RBI Governor’s statement that all
earlier farm loan waiver packages have failed to provide relief and such
packages would add to banks' NPAs and
Indian Govt. an affidavit in the Supreme Court said the government
cannot give the MSP on the basis of the BJP's proposed formula of investment
plus 50 per cent returns as it goes contrary to all existing formulae of the
Commission on Agriculture Costs and Prices, this is very unfortunate as central
Govt. failed to understand serious gravity of Vidarbha agrarian crisis when region
has reported 1,160 farmers suicides in Maharashtra in 2014,
and 124 in 2015 (till date), it was high time that the Centre looks at agrarian
crisis seriously in Vidarbha and announce special plan to address existing
despair," Tiwari said while urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to relook
into Budget -2015 outlay .