PM to review agriculture welfare programmes, farmer indebtedness on Friday

With many states reporting agriculture sector crisis including indebtedness of their farmers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will review the implementation of farmers' welfare schemes on Friday with concerned ministries and their officials.

The agenda of the meeting also includes steps being undertaken to double farmers income by 2022. The focus will be on availability of credit and access to capital at reasonable rates to farmers, official sources said.

The government increased farm sector credit target by 11% to Rs 10 lakh crore for the current fiscal and announced two dedicated funds with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore for micro irrigation and dairy processing.

The budgetary allocation for agriculture ministry has been raised by 7.81% to Rs 52,655 crore in financial year 2017-18. However, the government has drawn flak for the recent farm loan waiver undertaken for Uttar Pradesh which has led to similar demand from other states.

Recently farmers from Tamil Nadu took to a bizarre mode of protest in New Delhi seeking a relief package from the Centre. They also demanded loans waiver for their crops ruined in drought and subsequent cyclone.

In the wake of these developments, the prime minister is expected to review the insurance programme for farmers – Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana --aimed at securing them from unpredictable weather woes.

E-National Agriculture Market (NAM), a pan-India e-trading platform launched to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities will also be reviewed, the sources said.

They said the awareness level and implementation of Lab-To-Land, Har Khet Ko Paani and Per Drop More Crop schemes will be reviewed.

The Prime Minister had also launched Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), an end-to-end solution to end irrigation woes with the objective of “water to every field”. The programme is aimed at developing long-term remedies to mitigate the effect of drought. It is being implemented in mission mode by three ministries with the ministry of water resources leading the project.

Ministers of agriculture, food, water resources will be present in the review meeting along with officials of finance and other ministries.

Apart from doubling farmers’ income, the government has also committed to making them tech savvy, boosting agriculture research and education, and building farm-related infrastructure for the overall growth of the farm sector.