‘Kisan Samman is apaman’

The Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi, far from being a samman, is an apamanfor farmers. Frankly, it would have been all right if the government had made no declaration at all. After all, this was an interim Budget. I would have been happy if the government had simply supplied answers to some of the following questions:

How much has the farmers’ income increased in the first three years of the supposedly six-year mission to double the farmers income? Why has the government not declared the data on farmer suicides? How much procurement was done on the minimum support price under the much-celebrated PM Aasha scheme? Why has the coverage under PM Fasal Bima Yojana shrunk instead of increasing? What is the government doing about the menace of stray animals all over the country? ~6,000 per family per year amounts to an income support of ~500 per family a month. This is less than old age pension prevailing in at least more than half the states. This amounts to ~3.30 per day for a five-member family, not enough even for a cup of tea.

This is nowhere compared to Telangana’s package of ~10,000 per acre a year. This scheme bears no relationship to the cost of cultivation or the household cost of farmers. It is also not clear how it can be implemented because there is no comprehensive database on farmers. Tellingly, the government wants to implement the scheme with retrospective effect. The idea that somehow an instalment of ~2,000 per family would make them forget the loot of farmers’ prices, the utter neglect during drought and the untold misery of note bandi, shows the sheer cynicism with which this government views farmers and their votes.