What farmers want
Agricultural sector has once
again been given the
backbench in Budget 2006,
reveals Devinder Sharma
The alarm bells have been ringing for
quite some time. In the past 15 years,
successive finance ministers had
gradually pushed agriculture out of the
country's economic vision. And if the Budget
2006-07 is to be read in continuation, Finance
Minister P Chidambaram has further pushed
agriculture to the margins.
At a time when the business and industry
federations have pumped in enough resources
to create an illusion of ‘India Everywhere’, the
entire effort seems to be directed to bolster
the corporate feel-good factor. No wonder,
the past two Budgets have received an
extraordinary welcome from the stock
exchange, with the sensex index jumping from
3,656 in February 2005 to cross a whopping
10,422 in February 2006.
For the biggest job provider in the country,
providing direct employment to nearly 60
crore and indirectly supporting another 20
crore, agriculture finds little space in the
Budget proposals. Considering the
unprecedented agrarian crisis that prevails in
the countryside and knowing that the spate of
farmer suicides continues unabated (four
farmers in Vidharba region of Maharashtra
committed suicide a day before the Budget
was presented), it is high time a separate
Budget is presented for agriculture.
With an outlay of Rs 14,300 crore for the
National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme and considering that the National
Food for Work programme with an outlay of
Rs 5,400 crore stands merged with this
scheme, it seems the government is making a
half-hearted attempt at tackling growing
unemployment. After all, it has been widely
estimated that the total Budgetary
requirement for providing 100-day
employment to a member from each
household would require close to Rs 40,000
crore a year.
Cosmetic tinkering like providing a two
per cent crop loan interest liability amount
to farmers who took loan from scheduled,
