AP: Empowering farmers

‘Rythu Saadhikara Samstha’

It is time for N Chandrababu Naidu to go whole-hog into the farmers’ issues including agricultural reforms in the newly carved-out state of Andhra Pradesh. The state government has taken up the lead in a way by institutionalising the programme of relieving the farmers from their indebtedness which often leading to suicides, a very issue that was troubling both the governments for over a decade.

To offer a firm solution to this menace, the state government has come up with an idea of launching a ‘Rythu Saadhikara Samstha’ (also known as farmers’ empowerment corporation (FEC)). Its main objective is to provide one-stop-shop to address the farmer problems besides offering agriculture debt redemption to farmers. It also covers welfare and empowerment activities of farmers.

Interestingly, in one-stroke, Naidu could able to bring sanctity to the election promise – loan waiver, as the new set up will soon obtain legislative sanction also, a senior official commented. Thus, “farmers’ loan waiver” is no more be a vote-catch agenda of political parties.

To recall, during 80s, NT Rama Rao government had also mooted a farmers’ organisation christened ‘AP Karshaka Parishad’. The institution was setup by the then Chief Minister Rama Rao in order to take up the problems of farmers. Even, YS Rajasekhara Reddy government had also initiated a programme called ‘Agriculture Technology Mission’.

The present outfit will take up all the activities relating to farmers and over-and-above the financial burden of the poor peasants.

The FEC will have a paid up capital of Rs 1 crore and is headquartered in Vijayawada. The government had already released Rs 5,000 crore towards first installment to the banks as part of agriculture debt redemption as proposed in the budget.

What is Farmers Empowerment programme?

The program envisages empowering farmers by providing them with the affordable agriculture technologies and marketable techniques. It is a concept developed by the World Bank in order to promote the well being of the farmers with newer technologies and to optimise agricultural operations and to extend with approachability of global markets.

The concept was also been advocated by well known agriculture scientists including Prof MS Swaminathan and economists like Prof Jayati Ghosh. Both these personalities had worked with the (united) Andhra Pradesh government in times of ‘growing suicides by farmers’ and extended their valuable suggestions.

Relieving the farmers from indebtedness is one of the focus areas of the program. According to the World Bank pattern of empowerment is to make the farmer indebted to government. And later, the farmers will return the amount to government by the way of grains, as agreed towards loan waiver. The government will extend technical knowhow and market info besides offering other regular sops.

The UPA experiment

In 2008, UPA government had implemented loan waiver scheme and relieved the farmers from debts by waiving of over Rs 52,000 crore, which earned the party to win the elections later, but the decision was put all the nationalised and cooperative banks under heavy burden of NPAs.

Now, AP initiative

After taking a leaf from the UPA experiment, the TDP government had chosen a reform-cum-innovative methodology to tackle the issue. The programme is intended to promote a farmer-friendly environment without undue cost to the exchequer.

In fact, Naidu who launched power reforms in 1999, which was lauded by the international financial bodies and he who had taken to greater lengths the movement of self-help groups towards women empowerment.

The institution promoted then was SERP (Society for elimination of rural poverty) to take up task of women empowerment. Even today, the movement is intact; in fact, the movement is now in the hands of womenfolk and successive governments have to support these programmes, say analysts while comparing it with the proposed farmers initiative. Today, the SHG movement is replicated in most of the states and also taken to SAARC nations.

Coming back to the topic, the farmers who availed crop loans up to Rs 1.5 lakh will get cover under the debt redemption scheme. The government had already paid 20 per cent of the total farmers’ debt to banks and remaining will be cleared in 4 installments. The new institution is expected to take up this task in the coming months, officials said.

Conclusion

In a nut shell, FEC is all set to transform as a strong arm of the state government in all the farmer related activities – welfare, development and also institutional. Hopefully, this proposed institution would help in the prompt delivery of benefits to the farmers by cutting down the red-tapism and corruption.