Farm budget will not help farmers, says Manpade

Mangalore, March 3: Agriculture policies of the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre and the Bharatiya Janata Party Government in the State are worsening the plight of farmers, Maruti Manpade, State committee member of the Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha, said on Wednesday.

Addressing presspersons here, Mr. Manpade said that the Centre had reduced its allocation for agriculture by Rs. 172 crore from the previous year to Rs. 17,522 crore. It had not implemented the recommendations of the M.S. Swaminathan panel on the agrarian crisis, submitted three years ago, he said.

The report aimed at taking knowledge from the universities to farmers. But that had not happened, he added.

The State Government's agriculture budget was nothing but a rehash of old policies with nothing to mitigate the crisis faced by farmers. “When the Government's policies are not favourable to agriculture, no law can help farmers,” he said.

He said that on the pretext of an agricultural budget, the State Government had set out to make it possible for any person to hold land without any restriction. By amending Section 79 (a) and (b) and Section 109 (1), (2) and (3) of the Land Reforms Act 1961, and clause 64 of the Revenue Act, the Government would “facilitate handing over of 2 lakh acres of agricultural land to multinational companies and large Indian companies”.

Mr. Manpade said that the sangha would formulate an alternative policy for agriculture that would include among other things, recommendations of the Swaminathan panel.

The focus of the policy would be on land reforms, protection from moneylenders, measures to increase yield, and a seed policy that favoured farmers.

He said that every gram panchayat should have at least one soil testing unit to help farmers.

Mr. Manpade said that the sangha was pressuring the Government to give land losers shareholding rights in the companies.

Addressing the students displaced by the Mangalore Special Economic Zone on Wednesday, Mr. Manpade urged them to be united and fight for their rights.