National policy for farmers on anvil

Ludhiana, May 25 (UNI) A nationwide exercise is underway to evolve a strategy under the National Policy for Farmers, to focus on the problems of their families as ''human beings feeding the nation.'' Prepared by the National Commission on Farmers, the policy draft 'serving farmers and saving farming' has been circulated by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences to stakeholders for comments. It is to be submitted to the Union Ministry of Agriculture in Oct for adoption by the nation on August 15, 2007, when India celebrates 60 years of its independence.

Such a policy would be launched for the first time in India's agricultural history.

At the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) here, a ten-member 'steering committee' comprising of directors of research and extension and deans of constituent colleges has been engaged in framing an 'action plan' for the 'year of agricultural renewal' based on the three reports of the National Commission on farmers.

PAU Vice-Chancellor Dr K S Aulah is the chairperson of the committee.

The policy document is called, ''Jai Kisan', a slogan coined by the late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

This slogan could not be converted into public policies, which recognise the pivotal role of farmers in nation's well-being and security, the committee said.

Even as the draft policy for farmers paints a grim agricultural scenario and expressed concerns over suicides by 30,000 farmers in six states because of indebtedness, it offers a ray of hope to reverse the existing trends.

The policy also suggested a change in the name of the Union Ministry of Agriculture by adding ''farmers welfare'' to it.

The policy encompasses a wide specturm of issues concerning farmers across the country from fishermen to hill farmers. The definition of 'farmer' has been proposed to be expanded to ''farm labour, share croppers, tenants, small, marginal and sub-marginal cultivators, besides farming families engaged in sericulture and vermiculture''.

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