Govt Draws 20-point plan after Farmers suicides rise

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Govt Draws 20-point plan after Farmers suicides rise

Maharashtra tops the ladder

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, June 28

The government admitted in the Lok Sabha today that Maharashtra tops the list of states in the country where maximum number of farmers' suicides have taken place followed by Telangana and Karnataka. Maharashtra witnessed 3030 suicides out of 8007 suicides in the country during 2015 which is higher than 2014 when 2568 suicides took place. In fact, during 2015 the suicides as a whole rose in the country compared to 2014.

The government also informed the Rajya Sabha that data for the subsequent years of 2016, 2017 & 2018 is not available so far. However, there were no farmers' suicides in as many as 16 states out of 36 including in Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Goa.

The Agriculture & Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, however, claimed that these would come down as an action plan chalked out by the states is backed by 20-point aggressive support by the Centre. He said that agriculture is a a State subject and State Governments undertake development of perspective plans and ensure effective implementation of the programmes/ schemes.

The Government had constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee in 2016 to recommend a strategy for Doubling of Farmers’ Income (DFI) by the year 2022 following which an Empowered committee has been constituted on January 23 this year for monitoring the implementation of the recommendations.

The government initiated market reforms including e-NAM, Soil Health Cards, drip irrigation, PM Fasal BIMA, PM-Kisan, higher MSP and other steps to boost income and bring down input costs.

Ends

PM-FM Brainstroming over Budget

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Exclusive story

PM-FM  Brainstroming over Budget 

meetings on a daily basis for hours

Both worried over the state of economy 

Focus on Farm & Job Creation 

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, Jan. 8 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started holding pre-Budget meetings with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and top officials of the PMO and Finance Ministry.

Extremely worried over the state of economy and voices of concern emanating from various quarters, the Prime Minister has set a new precedent by actively playing a role in the Budget making exercises. 

Highly placed sources in the PMO say that Jaitley is meeting the Prime Minister virtually on a daily basis for hours together and later officials of the finance ministry also join to provide required information. These sources say such meetings go until late in the night. Normally, the Prime Ministers have adopted hand-off approach to the Budget-making exercise and interact with their finance ministers once or twice on policy issues. Even Modi had adopted hand-off approach since 2014 with regard to the Union Budget. Jaitley used to visit Modi and apprise him of important points and take a few suggestions. 

But the 2018 Budget will be different, it seems. It will have a clear stamp of Modi as he is going into the details of all major proposals and wants to understand everything to get at the bottom. Modi is now hands-on PM and policy issues and giving direction to the Budget. It is clear from the deliberations that Modi is looking for a one Big Idea to hit upon the farm sector which is in great distress. Modi wants agriculture and farm sector to be the main focus of his budget which can also lead to job creation. He was also toying with the idea of bringing a new agriculture minister. but it has now been kept in abeyance. Jaitley has already made it clear that the government's priority will,  be to accelerate growth momentum, employment generation and focus on farm sector. 

Instead of raising the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of crop, Modi government is focusing on reducing cost of farming, providing technology, giving the farmer fertilizer needed for his soil, storage and marketing facilities. For the first time in the country, 12 types of fertilizers will be provided in the country to the farmers as per their soil health cards. All fertilizer companies have started implementing the scheme. The import of agriculture produce is being restricted and export of sugar and other crop is being liberalised.  The focus will be on increased allocation for NREGA. The allocation will go up from Rs 69000 crores to Rs 80,000 to provide immediate help to the people in the villages.