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Vested interests making life
tough for Punjab farmers
WSN Bureau
 CHANDIGARH:
Vested anti-farmer interests in Punjab are so well entrenched that
even a simple order of the government, one that has been passed
repeatedly and about which there was even a sworn affidavit
submitted before the high court, is being obstructed. And
obstructing it are none other than politicians of Akali, Congress
and other pedigree.
For decades, the
government has been maiking payments to farmers through aarhtiyas
but with the aarhtiyas also acting as money lenders, the instrument
had become a favorite tool to keep the farmers under the yoke of the
moneylender.
Now that the
previous Amarinder Singh regime and then the Badal government
decided to make payments to farmers via cheques and directly, the
aarhtiya lobby was bound to jump about and stage shrill protests,
but casting aside all pretense, even many Congress and Akali MLAs
and MPs are coming to the support of the aarhtiyas.
Meanwhile, there
is some silver linging as news comes that the
Punjab
government is likely to redraft the Punjab Relief of Agricultural
Indebtedness Bill -- shelved after being drafted in 2006 -- to bail
out the indebted farmers from the web of private moneylending
system.
The Bill was
drafted at the fag end of the Capt Amarinder Singh regime. A fresh
draft could take one more year.
Earlier, the
Chief Minister had submitted in the
Punjab
and Haryana High Court that the state would pay compensation to
families of farmers who committed suicide in the districts of
Bathinda and Sangrur. So far, not one farmer has been paid that
money.
Initially, the
state government agreed to give Rs 2 lakh to each victim's family
from 2000 onwards, but it stated in the just-concluded Assembly
session that the bereaved families of cases between 2006 and 2008
would be compensated in the initial phase.
Though the High
Court was told that the compensation would be given only after the
study of all other 18 districts, the Chief Secretary said the
Financial Commissioner Revenue had already forwarded the file to the
Finance Department, with the proposed compensation of over Rs 30
crore to be paid at the rate of Rs 2 lakh in Bathinda and Sangrur.
The Finance
Department, which is sitting on the file for obvious reasons of cash
starvation, has not even allocated the compensation amount in the
budget for 2009-10.
After the
Movement Against State Repression (MASR) highlighted the issue of
suicides by indebted farmers, Punjab Agricultural University carried
out a census study and confirmed 2,890 farmers' suicides in just the
two districts of Bathinda and Sangrur from 2000 to 2008.
22
July 2009
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