To raise productivity and ease agrarian distress, the government is planning to bring two crore hectares under irrigation through various schemes, including the ₹80,000-crore Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP), Minister for Road Transport, Highways & Shipping, Nitin Gadkari, said here on Tuesday.

Besides this, a provision of ₹20,000 crore has been made under Pradhan Mantri Sinchai Yojana, said Gadkari, addressing a workshop on ‘Liberating the Farmers from Death Trap’, organised by the Council for Social Development. Inter-linking of rivers would also help bring more areas under cultivation, he added. Farmer organisations, however, disagreed with the Minister, who incidentally had left for a prior engagement.

Citing the case of higher onion production this year, a farmer from Maharashtra said: “We have sold 900 kg of onions for as little as ₹1 this year. Does the government have any idea how much was spent to produce that? Wasn’t this a case of high productivity? What did we get in return?”

Expressing concern over rising indebtedness and farmer suicides, Gadkari, who hails from Maharashtra, said this year’s Budget had made a provision of ₹9 lakh crore in priority sector lending for the agriculture sector. The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, with lower premium, will also provide relief to farmers, he added.

Need for income support

However, Kavita Kuruganti of Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture, said the agriculture sector was facing multifarious challenges, including from climate change, adding that what farmers needed was economic security.

“Farmers need income support and that can only come from an Act that guarantees minimum income,” she said, adding that “if the largest section of the population does not have purchasing power, what will happen to the country’s dream GDP growth?”

Commenting on declining farm income despite higher productivity in some regions, such as Punjab, farm expert Devinder Sharma called for the immediate constitution of a national farm income commission.

He, along with former bureaucrat Muchkund Dubey, also called for a relook at the policy focus on cash crops, which are directly affected by global price volatility. Gadkari had stressed on the need for large-scale cash crop cultivation, citing the example of olive cultivation in Rajasthan, whose exports he said had “transformed” the State’s economy.

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