Rains devastate farmers in Centre-State paddy fight

The worst fears of the farmers in Telangana have come true. The delay in taking a decision to open paddy procurement centres has led to widespread damage to paddy parked at procurement centres due to heavy unseasonal rain on Tuesday night in several parts of the state. This would now mean that the farmers will have to wait for couple of days for the paddy to dry before they can sell it. With weather office predicting possibility of more rain, the farmers seem to be heading towards greater problems. Even if there is no rain again, the millers will purchase them at reduced rate as there is every possibility of the quality getting affected.

It is time to stop patting one's own back and claim that they would show the country a better roadmap. If only the state government had taken necessary measures to open procurement centres and completed major part of procurement by now, things would have been different, and it would have been hailed as real Rythu Bandhu. Slogans and names of schemes may sound interesting but the main question one needs to ask is whether the measures are really taken in the direction of being a Bandhu of farmers.

The farmers have been expressing fears of unseasonal rains in May and felt that the Telangana government should open procurement centres and speed up the process of procurement. But the government had locked horns with the Centre on the issue of paddy purchase more for political reasons. The Centre had maintained that the state government did not attend any meeting convened by the Centre and sign the annual MoU on the procurement of Rabi crop and no one attended the meetings. However, the state had been alleging that the Centre refused to buy paddy.

In fact, it has become a practice for the government to depute officials to attend even virtual meetings convened by the Prime Minister. The Chief Minister had remarked on many occasions that the virtual meetings were waste of time as Modi does not give time for others to speak. May be true to a great extent. But whenever the Prime Minister convenes a meeting, the CMs should attend and make an attempt to present their viewpoint. If they are not given a chance, it would give them another point to politically attack the ruling party at the Centre. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised this issue after the virtual meeting and is now on a campaign mode against Modi and his style of functioning.

Mixing of politics and governance can always be disastrous and that is what has exactly happened regarding the farmers of Telangana. The state government may say that they will see that the farmers will not suffer losses and may even ask the Civil Supplies department to procure paddy even if it gets discoloured. But all such assurances never get fulfilled at the ground level. It is always the middlemen and millers who rule the roost.