Big promises, but show us the money: Farmers

Stepping up of farm credit outflow to Rs3,75,000 crore apart, the budget has laid down a road map for an integrated approach to agriculture growth, but fails in backing it up with the financial outlay. The overall feeling among farmers and experts is that despite reeling under sagging incomes, they have got a raw deal.

“It’s a usual, run-of-the-mill budget,” was how farmers’ leader Vijay Jawandhia reacted. “When will the government take a long-term view of farming in the country?”

It does not provide any hope to the sector that needs a surgical procedure for a resurrection, especially since the 2009 economic survey tells us that the country needs to take a long-term policy view of the sagging agriculture and rural economy.

The budget has no direction to augment farm incomes, a factor key to the revival of agriculture sector. The hike in petroleum prices would, in fact, have a serious implication for the farm economy, particularly farm incomes.

This year is one of the worst drought years. Ahead of the budget, Jawandhia said, the government withdrew Rs6,000 crore from the farmers’ pockets by raising urea price.

 The central issue is that 60% of India's agriculture is dependent on rain. This budget has no vision for the rain-fed farmers. For years, it is these rain-dependent farmers who are reeling under a severe economic onslaught in a changed economy — and there’s no end in sight to their plight, even as thousands continue to kill themselves.

Farm growth is slated to fall by 0.2% in the current fiscal — in terms of net production. Though the budget  speaks of giving micro-nutrient based subsidy that would augment production, but there is no clear definition of micro-nutrients in the policy.

The FM, however, made a beginning for pulses and oilseedmission with an allocated of Rs300 crore for 60,000 villages doing dry-land farming. It means a paltry Rs50,000 for every village, but it has scope for bringing about a change in
the long term.

Irrigation, the most important input for agriculture, finds no mention in the budget, said the father of India’s green revolution and MP, professor MS Swaminathan.