Tenant farmers, who comprise about 25 % of the total cultivators in Telangana, are unlikely to be benefited from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government’s financial assistance scheduled to be given from Kharif season next year. Only the land owning farmers are expected to be extended the benefit, to begin with.
Highly placed officials told The Hindu that in the absence of any documentation on the tenancy of lands it would become extremely difficult for the government to extend the benefit to the tenant farmers.
“The government doesn’t want to get into any kind of mess while launching the new flagship scheme in May next,” the sources said, adding that the benefit could be offered to tenants in future once the necessary legislation is in place to safeguard the interests of the landowners.
In such circumstances, it’s purely left to the discretion of landowners whether they want to share the investment support or any other benefit extended by the government/insurance companies for that matter – such as crop insurance benefit or crop loss compensation – to tenant farmers.
According to estimates, there are about 14 lakh tenant farmers in Telangana out of over 55.54 lakh farmers as per official statistics. “Genuinely speaking, the tenants should get the benefit of investment support scheme under which every landholding farmer is entitled to get ₹ 4,000 per acre before the commencement of agriculture season both in Kharif and Rabi, since it’s they who would be actually toiling for raising crops,” the official said.
A system such as issuing Loan Eligibility Certificates (LEC), which was introduced with huge hopes to provide institutional credit support to tenant farmers, is not viable for the investment support scheme due to the practical difficulties involved. The system has failed to succeed much in the absence of supportive documentation on tenancy of lands, mostly due to apprehensions of the original landholders that tenants could contest for rights over the land in lateral years, the officials explained.
The LEC system, on the other hand, helped only about 10% of tenant farmers get institutional credit support since issuing eligibility certificates was difficult process.
Besides, the bankers have apprehensions over recovery of loan given, in the event a particular landholding is let out to another cultivator by the owner before repayment is done.
“It is difficult for Village Revenue Officers (VROs) to ascertain actual tenant farmers as the landlords could change the tenant even after one year,” the senior official said explaining the reasons for the failure of the LEC system.
Officials stated that the government is planning to allocate sufficient funds for the scheme, estimated to be about ₹ 7,000 crore a year, as part of the separate budget to be presented for agriculture from 2018-19 onwards.