• Home

TRS wakes up to farm crisis after 100 farmer deaths

Following the alarming situation in Telangana where over 100 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the past month, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced various short, medium and long-term measures to address the distressed farm sector's issues. He, however, made it clear that the government could do little to stop the occurrence of suicides "in a day or two" as was being demanded by the opposition.
"Suicides by farmers in the State are not a new phenomenon, but the opposition is demanding that the government stop suicides by tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Is that possible? Everyone knows that the current situation is a fall-out of decades of misrule by successive governments in undivided Andhra Pradesh. All I am asking for from the farmers is to give some time for the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government which has been in power only for 15 months," the chief minister said, replying to a two-day debate on farmers' issues in the Telangana State Assembly.
Seeking to reassure the debt-ridden distressed farmers in the State, he said the State government was committed to bail them out of the unprecedented crisis they are in by initiating several measures including nine hours of assured and quality power supply, increased research to improve farm productivity and time-bound completion of on-going and new irrigation projects in the new State by allocating Rs250 billion in the budget in the next three years.
Telangana has been witness to a major spurt in farmers' suicides due to mounting debts and failed crops due to an inactive monsoon in the past month. Debt-ridden farmers have been committing suicide by the dozen leading to the government calling for a special session of the State Legislature to discuss the alarming situation.
In his two-hour address, KCR appealed to the farmers not to resort to extreme steps even as he dwelt at length on the ills plaguing the farm sector and how successive governments had failed to come to rescue of the farmers.
"My dream of a 'Bangaru Telangana' (Golden Telangana) does not make sense if distressed farmers are going to commit suicide," he said.
The major initiatives announced by the chief minister included sending proposals to the Centre urging it to declare at least 200 mandals as drought-affected due to poor rainfall. Instead of taking district as a unit, to leverage more benefit, the government will send mandal-wise details to the Union Government. The Government has also initiated steps to adopt more farmer-friendly measures by issuing ePassbooks and ePahanis, he said, adding that farmers will be exempted from paying registration charges to register their land holdings. The Money Lenders Act would also be passed in the present session of the Legislature, the chief minister said.
Claiming that his 16-month old government could not be held responsible for the spate of suicides, the chief minister explained the initiatives taken by the TRS administration so far to help the farmers. Amid thumping of tables by the treasury benches, KCR said that from March next, farmers will get nine-hour quality power supply. "It will end their nightmare of going to the fields in the night risking snakebite," he said, while asserting that improved research and better productivity will also certainly help the farmers. He vowed to complete the pending irrigation projects by allocating Rs250 billion in the budget for the next three years.
Stating that the government was committed to making the State a seed bowl, he said: "We are in touch with over 340 seed companies, who have been urged to adopt one mandal each in the new State. By January, we are confident that at least half of the over 438 mandals would be adopted so that in three years time Telangana becomes a front-runner in seed production."
Stating that improved productivity in the farm sector was his government's priority, the chief minister said: "The area under cultivation has gone up but not the productivity. Our productivity is 1/3rd of the productivity achieved by countries like Israel. We plan to bring farm scientists from Israel to help the local farmers and agriculture scientists."

• India