Farmers Movement Archive

Farmer outfits in Maharashtra term it ‘pro-corporate’ Budget

Major farmer leaders and pro-farmer outfits across Maharashtra on Monday censured the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while saying that it favoured only the corporate sector and envisioned making the agrarian class wholly dependent on corporate caprice in the future. Speaking to The Hindu , Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) chief Raju Shetti said that the Budget only served to underscore the Modi government’s attitude of general apathy towards India’s farmers. “Given the alarming surge in rural unemployment due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown, the Centre should have taken the plight of unorganised farm labour into consideration. Instead, it has slashed the Budget for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) by 35%,” Mr. Shetti, a former two-time MP from Hatkanangale in Kolhapur district, said. The MGNREGA, besides providing employment to daily wage labourers in villages, had been vital in the development of basic infrastructure in the rural hinterland, the SSS leader said. “Instead, the Centre has made no provision for developing rural infrastructure while it has completely ignored the food processing industry as well as the dairy industry. The Modi regime’s only objective appears to make farmers dependent on their favourite industrialists — Ambani and Adani,” Mr. Shetti alleged. Describing the Budget as one which plunged farmers, agricultural labourers, and workers into an “abyss of economic deprivation”, Ajit Nawale, Maharashtra general secretary of the Left-affiliated All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), said that increased investment in the agrarian sector in order to meet the challenges of the post-COVID-19 economy was the least that farmers had hoped for from the Centre. “The Budget has dashed hopes of farmers, and is especially regrettable given that the National Economic Survey report had acknowledged the key role played by the agricultural sector in shaping the country’s economy during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. Instead, numerous provisions made in the Budget make it amply clear that corporate concerns and the industrial sector are the Centre’s ‘priorities’,” Mr. Nawale said. Hitting out as Ms. Sitharaman, the AIKS leader rubbished her claims of the Modi government doing well in the field of agricultural procurement. “The Finance Minister has given ‘evidence’ that the Centre has spent huge sums of money on wheat, paddy, pulses and cotton. She has tried to create an impression that the Modi government has given these funds to farmers as ‘grants’. In fact, of this amount spent on government procurement of agricultural commodities, the Centre has only had to bear the difference between the base price and the market price of agricultural commodities,” Mr. Nawale said. In the wake of the ongoing agitation by farmers at Delhi borders, he said that it was hoped that the Budget would provide a substantial provision for the protection of the minimum support price to farmers across the country. “Unfortunately, that has not happened. Furthermore, the government was expected to invest heavily in agricultural production, transportation, cold storage, processing and sales. Instead, the government has adopted a policy of letting corporate houses invest in the agrarian sector and allow them to make huge profits in return,” Mr. Nawale said. Both Mr. Shetti and Mr. Nawale pointed out that the Centre’s ‘withdrawal’ from investment in agriculture was proof of its pro-corporate policies. “Owing to the pandemic and the lockdown, both supply and demand have now collapsed. In such a scenario, it was imperative to work out a balance between supply and demand in the Budget. The government, however, has ignored the demand side while strengthening the supply side,” Mr. Nawale said.

The Hindu

2021-02-02

Pune