BATHINDA: Farm groups have termed the Union Budget a “bitter harvest for farmers being sold as sweet harvest”. Claiming there was nothing worthwhile in the Budget for them, they said the claims of doubling farm income by 2022 were nowhere to be seen in reality.
They alleged that misleading claims were being made on minimum support price (MSP) which was being given only on two crops and the benefits of that too were not being availed by most farmers. They said they had already rejected the claim of the Union government of MSP being 1.5 times of the input cost of crops and had demanded that the ambit of PM Kisan should be enlarged but it was not done.
“Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman totally lied while making claims of providing 1.5 times of cost as MSP on wheat and paddy. The formula of calculating the price is faulty. The farmers have been demanding the fixation of MSP as per C2 plus 50% profit by calculating all the ingredients, including rent on land, family labour and rent of machinery, but the government is not considering many elements while determining the input cost. What’s more, MSP is given on only two crops whereas farmers have been demanding on all 23 crops. In all, only 6% farmers are getting benefit of MSP, which is not acceptable,” said BKU Ekta Ugrahan general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokri.
Farm leader Jagmohan Singh said, “FM claims the government is on the way to doubling farm income by 2022, but where is the report card to show how much progress has been achieved so far on the count. Only hollow claims will not work, show us where government and farmers stand as 2022 is only a year away. Tell us how the income will be doubled in just one year.”
BKU Krantikari president Surjit Singh Phool said the benefit of PM Kisan had been provided to only nine crore farmers, whereas it was to be given to 14 crore farmers. “Why its ambit was not enlarged to cover all the 14 crore farmers. The other flagship scheme Fasal Bima Yojna has failed to provide benefit to farmers so they are not coming forward to subscribe to it,” he claimed.
Jai Kisan Andolan’s Avik Saha said the FM in the Budget speech did not share details about flagship schemes like doubling of farmers’ income by putting up a scorecard, allocations for Pradhan Mantri Anndaata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA), price support scheme-market intervention scheme (PSS-MIS), PM Fasal Bima Yojna, its allocation and status.
The government claimed that 1,000 more markets would be covered under eNAM but this model was not working in Punjab and many other states because the infrastructure had not been put in place and farmers had not been made fully aware of it, said farmer Gurdial Singh of village Sangat in Bathinda.
Minister Sitharaman told Parliament, “In case of wheat, the total amount paid to farmers in 2013-14 was Rs 33,874 crore. In 2019-20, it was Rs 62,802 crore and in 2020-21, it was over Rs 75,000 crore. The number of wheat growing farmers that were benefited increased in 2020-21 to 43.36 lakh compared to 35.57 lakh in 2019-20.” For paddy, she said, the amount paid in 2013-14 was Rs 63,928 crore. In 2019-20, it increased to Rs 1,41,930 crore and was estimated to increase to Rs 1,72,752 crore in 2020-21. Number of paddy farmers benefited increased from 1.2 crore in 2019-20 to 1.54 crore in 2020-21. In pulses, Rs 236 crore was paid to farmers in 2013-14 and in 2020-21, it was at Rs 10,530 crore, more than 40 times increase from 2013-14. “Similarly, Rs 90 crore was paid in 2013-14 to cotton farmers, while Rs 25,974 crore has been paid in 2020-21 as of January 27,” she added.