Plan Panel spells out relief measures for Vidarbha farmers

New Delhi, July 16 (UNI) The Planning Commission has drawn up an action plan on eliminating regional disparties and rural distress in Maharashtra, especialy Vidarbha, including immediate assistance to farmers and measures to improve the relief package given to them by the State government.

The Commission has stressed the need to 'strengthen, enhance and effectively implement' the State government's relief package on an emergency basis in Vidarbha.

The Commission says it is necessary to step up National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREP) works, if necessary by increasing the minimum wage, which in Maharashtra is less than the national indicative of Rs 60 per day.

The action plan has been drawn up on the basis of a report by an Inter-Ministerial team constituted by the Planning Commission on the direction of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The report has recommended creation of a Non-Lapsable Pool of resources from the funds allocated by the Governor for backlog removal and equitable distribution of resources among different regions.

Vidarbha has witnessed a spate of suicides by farmers and Dr Manmohan Singh who visited the region announced a Central relief package.

The Planning Commission team attributed the rural distress to several factors: -- Acute rural distress was due to heavy indebtedness among cotton farmers with loan outstanding owed to both formal and informal systems. The large volume of loan was resulting from the informal system, bulk of which comprised unlicensed money lenders or input dealers; -- the immediate trigger of the present distress was the sudden shock faced by the farmers due to withdrawal of monopoly procurement which had been in vogue for the past two decades; -- the flooding of rural areas by open market input dealers for seeds and pesticides was another channel through which their distress was increased; -- the lack of responsible advisory led to wrong or uninformed choice by the farmers in adopting varieties of seeds which were not suitable for the rainfed conditions, coupled with the last three years's low range in an otherwise assured rainfall area.

The team found that while Bt cotton in fact does quite well in irrigated conditions, it does not do as well in rainfed conditions.

Besides, it found that use of pesticides continued to be high in rainfed conditions and as a predominent number of farmers in Vidarbha are without irrigation, the problem became acute; -- there is lack of adequate non- farm activities as a fall back option.

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