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Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal on Monday attacked the Congress-led UPA government for failing to address woes of farmers across the country.
Addressing the Vibrant Gujarat Global Agriculture Summit in Gandhinagar they claimed that farmers and the rural community were the most neglected by the central government.
Badal called the process of fixing minimum support price (MSP) for farm goods as unjustified and demanded autonomy for the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP), a central government body that decides the prices of farm produce. While his younger counterpart Modi blamed the Union government for creating hype of extending banking support to farmers and claimed that only 30 per cent of farmers get loans from banks.
The senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader said that while Punjab accounts for only 2.5 per cent of country's population it produces more than 50 per cent of India's food grains. Badal was critical of how the central government decides on the MSP of farm produces. "Agriculture prices are beyond our control. It is decided by the Centre. Neither I nor Modi can do anything about it. No chief minister is consulted before deciding on the MSP," Badal said.
He went on to say that farmers have produced enough food grains to feed the people of the country and fulfilled their responsibility, but the Central government failed in fulfilling its responsibility.
"Today the farmers are in huge debt. Are the prices fixed by the Centre justified taking into consideration the rising input cost than expenditure that farmers has to incur in farming?," Badal asked chairman of CACP Ashok Gulati who was sharing dais with him. "Agriculture pricing should be autonomous and not act under pressure of central government," he demaned.
He said it was easy to tell farmers don't grow paddy. "But when there was a crisis in agriculture, the farmers are told to grow paddy. Now that the farmer is in crisis, shouldn't government come to his help?" he questioned. Agreeing that farmers need to diversify Badal said, "But can there be diversification without funds?" The five time Punjab chief minister also accused the central government of 'a step motherly' treatment to farmers.
Both chief minister's who are allies in the NDA, also expressed concern over rising debt on farmers and rural community. "There is as much as Rs 30,000 crore debt of farmers today. Also, Punjab farmers are being accused of bringing down ground water level. But, I ask did they use it for themselves...it was for the country," Badal said.
Modi went a step ahead and said that the rising debt on farmers has led to alarming number of farmers suicides in the country. "In the country the rate of farmer suicides is high and the reason is debt, which is why we need to work towards integrating our farmers with the banking setup," he said. "As many as 270,000 farmers suicides have taken place in last 20 years, " Modi said quoting central government figures. He further called for placing trust in farmers and simplifying processes for farm loans and credits.
He believed that increasing farm productivity was important. "We should work on how to grow more in reduced amount of land," Modi said. Families are increasing while amount of land remained the same, which makes it important to increase productivity, he expalined.
Modi opined that farmers could help in filling up the current account deficit (CAD) . For this he called for the integration of technology and e-governance into agriculture. He stressed on giving benefits of the IT revolution to benefit the farmers in order to help make farmers more global.
