‘Need to make farming sector a priority’

K Chandrashekhar Rao to focus on agriculture and make it his priority to ensure global competitiveness for the agriculture sector, which is the need of the hour to address multiple issues.

Hyderabad: Despite being a formidable force in nation-building as the largest employer and contributor to the economy, the farming community always took a backseat when it came to national priorities. Even if successive governments claimed to accord top priority to agriculture, it remained an empty promise in terms of funding and farmers’ welfare. Political parties might blame each other or come up with excuses, but the main reason is lack of priorities.

All national political parties — Congress, BJP and the Left — have failed to set their priorities right, especially with regard to farmers, rural development and unorganised sectors in urban areas which comprise a majority of the country’s population. Therefore, they could not bring economic equity at the national level. Being a farmers’ activist, I want K Chandrashekhar Rao to focus on agriculture and make it his priority to ensure global competitiveness for the agriculture sector, which is the need of the hour to address multiple issues — from employment to economic development and food security, among others.

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Chandrashekhar Rao has set new benchmarks for agricultural development and farmers’ welfare through his novel initiatives such as Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, free uninterrupted power and others in Telangana as well as at the national level. Now that our IT and health sectors are of global standards, why not we achieve global competitiveness in the agriculture sector too?

As the TRS chief has been working on the farmer-centric agenda for his new national political party, we want him to prioritise four fundamental issues. Accordingly, the union Agriculture Minister should be given the position of Deputy Prime Minister with a separate budget for agriculture. States should be given complete control over the agriculture sector as it is a State subject and should be empowered to decide on crop cultivation as well as crop exports.

To bring global competitiveness, new technologies should be adopted, including farm mechanisation as well as integration of information technology, and nano and genetic technologies. Otherwise, we will never achieve global standards in terms of the quality and quantity of each crop produced. These technologies should be used to reduce cultivation costs. Just like the Telangana government is providing Rythu Bima to farmers, national political parties should come up with a crop insurance policy to compensate farmers within 30 days after crop damage.

As he has been demanding the same, Chandrashekhar Rao should remove GST on all agriculture inputs, including pesticides and farming machinery. Similarly, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) should be linked to farming. The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) should be made autonomous and agriculture planning should be done using the bottom-up method at gram panchayats and zilla parishads. Hopefully, Chandrashekhar Rao will get his priorities right.

— P Chengal Reddy, farmer activist and chief advisor of Consortium of Indian Farmers’ Associations (CIFA).