Delay in Rythu Bharosa and crop payments leaves Telangana farmers in distress

Farmers across Telangana are facing a severe fund crunch ahead of the vanakalam season due to delayed Rythu Bharosa payments, incomplete loan waivers, stalled procurement payments and limited access to fresh crop loans.

Sangareddy: As the Southwest monsoon was fast approaching, the farmers across the State are finding it difficult to mobilise funds for investment on cultivation of crops in the coming vanakalam season.

Since the Congress government denied Rytu Bharosa during the last yasangi restricting the incentive to just two acres, it had left farmers disappointed. As the Congress government, which promised Rs two lakh loan waiver to all the farmers after coming to power, failed to complete the loan waiver process, more than 50 per cent of the farmers could not get any new crop loans except renewing their existing loans.

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Meanwhile, the government left the farmers in a lurch by prolonging the process of procurement of paddy, sunflower, maize and jowar across the State. The delay added to the suffering of farmers who already got a poor yield due to untimely rains that lashed the district multiple times during the year.

The delay in releasing funds after procuring the grains had also left the farmers without any funds to take up vanakalam season works. For instance, the State Cooperative Marketing Production (Markfed) had purchased 22,000 quintals of maize from nearly 1,000 farmers in Sangareddy district.

However, it could not release a single rupee to any of these farmers so far. The farmers would need to spend anywhere between Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 as an investment on different crops during the vanakalam excluding the rent of the lands. Most of these farmers could not purchase seeds, fertilisers besides delaying the tilling up of lands due to lack of funds. The tenant farmers had more issues than the landlords.

The farmers will take up cultivation of various crops on approximately 17 lakh acres across erstwhile Medak during the season. Adding to their woes, the Congress government had failed to make any announcement on vanakalam rythu bharosa until now though the southwest monsoon will start on June 1.

Adding to their woes, the IMD was predicting poor monsoon this year which would further hamper the agriculture practices during the season. A farmer from Andole, K Satyam demanded that the government immediately release the pending Rytu Bharosa of last yasangi besides releasing the vanakalam instalment as well.

Unable to mobilise funds, he lamented that many farmers had approached private money lenders and pawn brokers to raise funds to invest in the crops.