Agri minister Radha Mohan Singh pins blame on Congress over 'farm distress'

Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh has pinned the blame on the previous Congress regimes for allegedly failing to address issues facing the agricultural sector.

Singh noted Congress ruled India for about 48 years after Independence, yet it utterly failed to resolve the farm crisis beyond coining empty slogans, he told the media here last night.

“Congress merely concentrated on strengthening the hold of one family in the party, while pro-agricultural slogans were coined in the name of helping farmers,” he said replying to a Business Standard query over the opposition’s charge of widespread ‘farm distress’ under the Narendra Modi government.

He claimed farm infrastructure projects had been lying stuck for past several decades under the previous Congress regimes, while the Swaminathan Commission recommendations were also not implemented, which would have otherwise majorly improved the socioeconomic condition of farmers by now.

The National Commission on Farmers was constituted by the then Manmohan Singh government in November 2004 under the chairmanship of Professor M S Swaminathan to find solutions to the country’s farm crisis. The Commission submitted five reports between December 2004 and October 2006.

“We have implemented the Swaminathan Commission report, which has also been acknowledged by the noted scientist,” the minister added.

Meanwhile, the union minister termed the interim Union Budget 2019-20 as historic and said it was the best budget after Independence so far as the agricultural sector was concerned, especially the annual support of Rs 6,000 in three instalments to about 125 million small and marginal farmers in the country having holdings of less than 2 hectares/5 acres. This is projected to cost the union exchequer almost Rs 75,000 annually.

Singh informed that Uttar Pradesh would be the biggest beneficiary of the scheme with almost 23.5 million small and marginal farmers expected to fall under its purview.

Earlier, the farmers were being provided agricultural input support, the government is now offering marketing and output support as well by way of facilitating procurement of a bigger basket of farm produce, he claimed.

He said the total agricultural budget during the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (2009-14) stood at Rs 1.21 trillion, while the Modi government had increased the outlay by 75% to Rs 2.11 trillion. The Budget was yesterday tabled in Parliament by acting finance minister Piyush Goyal.

“In the current Budget 2019-20, our government has hiked the agricultural outlay to a staggering Rs 1.41 trillion, which is 16% higher than the total 5-year farm budget allocation during the erstwhile UPA regime (2009-14) at Rs 1.21 trillion,” the union minister added.

He claimed some irrigation projects were stuck for the last 30 years, which had now been started by the Modi government, while the farm sector had been provided funds by way of both budgetary allocation and special corpuses.