Farmers’ Unions Accuse FM Of Making Misleading Claims, Call Budget ‘Bitter Harvest’

Bathinda: Terming the budget a “bitter harvest”, farm groups said that to double the farmers’ income by 2022 is an implausible target. They accused finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman of making misleading claims like MSP being 1.5 times the input cost of crops.

“FM claims the government is on course to doubling farm income by 2022, but where is the report card to show how much progress has been achieved so far on this count? Hollow claims won’t work — show us where the government and farmers stand as 2022 is only a year away. Tell us how income will be doubled in just a year,” farm leader Jagmohan Singh was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

Calling it faulty, the formula for calculating MSP was also questioned by BKU Ekta Ugrahan general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokri.

“Farmers have been demanding the fixation of MSP as per C2 plus 50% profit by calculating the cost of all the ingredients, including land and machinery rent and family labour. The government is not considering many elements while determining input costs.

“What’s more, MSP is given on only two crops whereas farmers have been demanding it for all 23 crops. In all, only 6% farmers are getting the benefit, which is not acceptable,” the BKU Ekta Ugrahan general secretary was quoted by the national daily.

Farm groups also took a swipe at the Centre for ignoring their demand to widen the ambit of PM-Kisan. According to BKU Krantikari president Surjit Singh Phool, the benefit of PM-Kisan had been extended to only nine crore instead of 14 crore farmers.

“The other flagship scheme, Fasal Bima Yojna, has failed to provide benefit to farmers; so they are not coming forward to subscribe to it,” Phool said.

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