NEW DELHI: Congress chief
Rahul Gandhi today termed the government's decision to hike the MSP of 14 kharif crops "applying a Band-Aid to a massive haemorrhage".
"PM's grand MSP increase is budgeted at just 15,000 Cr. for India's 120 million farmers; which is like applying a Band-Aid to a massive haemorrhage," he tweeted.
On Thursday, the central government had announced a hike on the minimum support price of 14 kharif (summer sown) crops for the 2018-19 marketing season.
As per the Centre's announcement, seven of the 14 crops have reported hikes of nearly 20% or more as compared to the MSP of these crops in 2017-18. The most popular
kharif crop, paddy, has, however, got a hike of nearly 13% (from Rs 1,550 per quintal in 2017-18 to Rs 1,750 per quintal in 2018-19).
The Congress chief also compared the budget of Centre’s proposed hike on MSP with the farm loan waiver announced by the Karnataka government.
"To put this MSP increase in perspective: in Karnataka, we've waived small farmer loans of over 34,000 Cr! Marketing vs Action," he added.
The Karnataka government on Thursday had announced a partial farm loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore, which will benefit those farmers whose borrowings are less than Rs 2 lakh.
