Congress sowed seeds of rural distress: Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Days after thousands of farmers held a protest march against the government’s “antifarmer” policies, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said inadequate resources by the Congress resulted in rural distress, while the NDA is illing the gap.

“It was inadequacy of resources pumped into the agricultural sector by the Congress that had led to both an agrarian distress and an inadequate quality of life in the rural areas,” he said in a Facebook post comparing the measures taken by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

“Removing the agrarian distress and improving the quality of life in rural areas can’t be done by slogans alone. From 1971 onwards, the Congress policy was slogans and not resources. The NDA has pumped in resources into the rural areas,” the minister said.

Jaitley said these resources have improved the infrastructure, quality of life in villages, raised agricultural productivity and are intended to give a remunerative price to the farmers to make them self-suficient rather than be only dependent on state agencies.

While India had 3.8 lakh km of regular roads before Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed ofice in 2014, by November 2018 the igure touched 5.7 lakh km, an increase of 1.9 lakh km, he said, adding investments in rural roads have increased three-fold.

As of 2013-14, about 70 per cent of the 17.47 crore rural households were electriied in the irst 67 years of Independence. But by November 2018, 16.53 lakh households, or 95 per cent, have been electriied, he said.