Close on the heels of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh’s detailed review of the working of the special economic package to the farmers’ suicide-hit districts in the country, the Centre has set in motion a process to revise its guidelines for the implementation of the scheme.

The Union agriculture ministry has written to the state governments concerned, inviting their suggestions on reworking the guidelines for implementing  the Rs 17,000-crore relief and rehabilitation package.

The recent review of the year-old special scheme personally undertaken by the Prime Minister in the three most suicide-prone states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, has declared that the implementation was very tardy due to “unscientific” guidelines set by the Centre, according to official sources.

The ministry has addressed its communication to the governments of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Maharashtra — the four states where the special package is being implemented, asking them to submit their suggestions to enable the Centre to rework the guidelines to make them effective tools for quick implementation.
‘Address distress’
The ministry’s initiative followed instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office to effect a quick “course correction”, to ensure that the package addresses the distress situation confronting the farming community. 

The scheme, announced by the Prime Minister in early 2006 to mitigate the woes of farmers, is being implemented in 31 districts across the four states.   

The course correction move came when even after more than a year of the implementation of the package, there were no signs of its effectiveness on the ground. The ministry has recorded as many as 4,026  cases of suicides in the four states since the implementation of the package last year, according to sources.

An expert group set up by the Prime Minister on rural indebtedness under the chairmanship of R Radhakrishna of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research has suggested a number of corrections in the scheme.

According to the panel, lack of co-ordination was one of the major shortcomings. The panel found that none of the ministries or departments were working in co-ordination with the other.