Red chillies spice up AP, Telangana politics as farmers face the heat
The red spicy chilli is literally bringing tears to the farmers in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states, while heating up its political atmosphere.
Following reports of angry chilli farmers dumping their produce in all major market yards and in some places setting fire to the produce on roads in protest against sharp fall in prices, chilli as become a hot topic for the opposition parties in Andhra and Telangana to take on the ruling parties.
On Monday, YSR Congress party president YS Jaganmohan Reddy launched a two-day Rythu Deeksha (fasting for farmers) at Guntur mirchi yard, the biggest in the country, in protest against the “lackadaisical attitude of the TDP government in coming to the rescue of farmers”.
In Telangana, Congress leaders visited the market yard in Khammam and staged a dharna in protest against the arrest of several chilli farmers who vandalised the market committee office three days ago.
The farmers were agitating over refusal of traders to purchase their produce which had been piling up for several days.
Encouraged by their respective governments during the last Rabi season to opt for commercial crops instead of food ones, farmers in both the states had gone in for chilli crop extensively. They were also attracted by the handsome price they got last year — ₹12,000 to ₹15,000 per quintal for the grade-1 variety and ₹7,000 for grade-2.
“In Guntur alone, the yield was around 1 lakh ton which is 40 per cent more than that of last year. With huge supply, the demand fell down sharply resulting in fall in prices,” Guntur mirchi yard president Mannava Subba Rao told Hindustan Times.
According to him, the price has fallen to ₹7,000 per quintal for Grade-1 and ₹3,000 per quintal for Grade-ii.
Om Puri’s 1983 classic Ardh Satya was screened at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, as the varsity paid tributes to the iconic actor who passed away in January after a body of work that academics say made him the “most versatile transnational actor”.
Academics, students and fans of global cinema came together at the event organised by the Institute of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures in the univer sity.