AgriNation News Network

Hyderabad | 17 Jan 2018

With farmers demanding a separate agri budget in the country for over a year now, Telangana government will introduce this year, a separate budget exclusively for agriculture and allied subjects.

The information was given by Telangana’s Agri Secretary C. Parthasarathi. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has given his approval to the agriculture budget.

As published in the Hindu, he told, “The agri budget will include agriculture, horticulture, university activities, marketing, co-operation, power subsidy to agriculture and investment support scheme to farmers at the rate of Rs 4,000 an acre per season. The scheme is likely to cost government Rs. 6,800 cr”.

The state government had proposed an expenditure of Rs. 13,640 cr for agriculture and allied activities, constituting 15.49 percent of the overall budget, for 2017-18. It included the last instalment of crop loan waiver of Rs. 4,000 crore which, however, will not figure in the budget for 2018-19.

Yogendra Yadav, a crusader for farmers and member of Jai Kisan Andolan, has been saying, “An agriculture budget can become a test of the government’s political will vis-à-vis the farmers”.

Expressing dismay over the agrarian crisis in the country, he says, “Though Agriculture, and all these allied activities, employ more than half of the country’s manpower (and womanpower!) but its share in the country’s GDP has been falling rapidly from 19 per cent in 2004-05 to 14.6 per cent in 2009-10, and further to 13.9 per cent in 2013-14”.

This has resulted in the continuous decline of farmers’ income.

According to the 70th Round of NSSO (‘Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households’), the average monthly farm income of an agricultural household is only Rs 3,844, including cultivation and animal husbandry.