Default By Design?

As the Union government’s PM-KISAN scheme completes a crop cycle, farmers complain of exclusion and partial cash support

- Jitendra, Imran Khan And Manish Mishra

IN THE first week of October, hectic parleys ensued between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

Apprehension and panic marked the officials’ conversations as news trickled from across the country that farmers were not getting the promised `6,000 a year in three instalments under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, or pm-kisan.

Its timing couldn’t have been more unsettling. The National Democratic Alliance government’s flagship programme, launched in February this year, is credited for its historic re-election in May this year. It is now a priority in the government’s development agenda. The scheme is now set to complete one full crop cycle, spanning kharif and rabi. Farmers are ready to harvest the rain crops while preparing for the winter one. They need cash to invest in farming inputs. But officials admit that very few farmers have received all three instalments, and enrolment is not picking up.

In mid-September, pm-kisan ceo Vivek Aggarwal appealed to state agriculture officials to speed up the process. By then, 12 states and union territories had not enrolled even 50 per cent of the eligible farmers. Some farmer-dense states had the worst record: Madhya Pradesh covered 49 per cent farmers while Bihar reached out to only 26 per cent.

One of the reasons for this slow enrolment was glitches in the mandatory seeding of Aadhaar numbers with farmers’ accounts. Immediately, the government decided to continue without it. But enrolments have only ebbed, while cash disbursals have slowed down.