Quick Fix Aid

A first after many years, farmers are at the centre of political attention. Ahead of the general elections, there is a rush of cash support schemes to woo them. This may bring some solace to farmers, but will the schemes have a lasting impact?

- Jitendra, Kundan Pandey, Manish Chandra Mishra, Jyoti Prakash Brahma, Nagaraju Jinka

ALL THROUGH the day, the friends and family of Sankariah N keep a close vigil on his whereabouts. The 35-year-old lives in Telangana’s NalgoNDA district, infamous for farmer suicides. He is surrounded by the conditions that led many other farmers to the fatal climax. “I am terribly upset by the fall in the prices of cotton and pulses,” he says, indicating negligible returns from his last crops. Much like the 60 per cent farmers of the country’s newest state, Sankariah too, has sunk in a debt abyss.

Yet, his face is brimming with gratitude. “Last year, the government gave me 12,000, an unimaginable amount, given that I had no resource to grow my next crop,” he says. The money comes from Rythu Bandhu Pathakam (RBP), the country’s first farmer investment support programme. Sankariah can be the first case study to understand if the programme can bring solace to the crisis-ridden agrarian sector. Under RBP, the state gives some 5 million annual farmers investment support of 20,000 per hectare (ha) without any cap on landholding. The cash security has been increased to 25,000 per ha for the current rabi, or winter, crop.

Sankariah has no clue that the country is enviously monitoring the impact of the programme on farmers like him. Neither does he know that just about a month ago, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) got re-elected in the state riding high on this programme. From the residence of the chief minister of Odisha to the Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi, Telangana’s experiment is being closely scrutinised.