Congress yet to clear air on assistance to landless farm labourers

The ruing party had not yet implemented its electoral promise of providing Rs 15,000 per acre financial assistance every year to the farmers under Indiramma Rythu Bharosa.

Hyderabad: While the Congress government is yet to clear doubts about the Rythu Bharosa, especially extending this assistance to tenant farmers, doubts are arising over the announcement of the Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy that “Rs.12,000 would be paid to landless farm labourers from this year”.

Interestingly, the ruing party had not yet implemented its electoral promise of providing Rs 15,000 per acre financial assistance every year to the farmers under Indiramma Rythu Bharosa. Incidentally, this scheme was to be made applicable to both land-owning and tenant farmers. Similarly, it had also promised payment of Rs 12,000 per annum to the landless laborers.

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However, the promise of Indiramma Rythu Bharosa remained only on paper this agriculture season. In the last season too, it had offered Rs.10,000 per acre (Rythu Bandhu offered by the BRS government) to farmers, sans any assistance to tenant farmers during both the seasons. There are about 20 lakh tenant farmers in the State.

The government had also constituted a cabinet sub-committee to seek opinions and suggestions from farmers, agriculture labourers, farm associations and intellectuals, on the pretext of there being some irregularities in Rythu Bandhu scheme implementation.

In this context, as identification of tenant farmer continues to pose a challenge and the exercise to identify them has not been commenced. Yet, the Chief Minister’s announcement to offer Rs.12,000 to farm labourers, raises apprehensions among the farming community. The committee is yet to submit its report. If this were so, the Government has not yet made public any details on the process of identification of the landless labourers.

The main opposition BRS has been pointing out that the Rythu Bharosa payments were being evaded on the ruse of implementing crop loan waiver and that many farmers were still complaining about their loans not being waived. To further compound the complexity, the ration card was made mandatory for crop loan waiver eligibility. This apart, the benefit was extended to a family as a unit, with a limit of Rs. 2 lakh, including interest component. A family was described as its earning member, irrespective of it being headed by a man or his wife, and dependent children.

In respect of financial assistance to farm labourers, there is no clarity on how much assistance will be given to a family as both men and women work as labourers. Will the Rs.12,000 benefit be extended to both or only one in a family, is a big question.