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Tenant farmers want their rights protected
Tenant farmers want their rights protected. Andhra Pradesh Tenant Farmers’ Association at a recently held round table meeting has asked the State government to protect the rights of the tenant farmers.
Andhra Pradesh Tenant Farmers’ Association at a recently held round table meeting has asked the State government to protect the rights of the tenant farmers. The speakers also asked the government to ensure that the tenant farmers get their due share in the agriculture loans, subsidies and loan waiver benefits.
Initiating discussion, the association secretary, N Ranga Rao, said that the government had brought down the loan amount to the tenant farmers from Rs 318 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 62 crore in 2014-15. The number of loan eligibility cards issued to the tenant farmers had also changed from 39,000 in 2014-15 to 1.55 lakh during 2013-14, he said.
He alleged that the government is slowly moving away from identifying the tenant farmers and protecting their rights. According to him, a major portion of the food grains are grown by the tenant farmers and it was only the tenant farmers who were providing wages to the agriculture labour. “The agriculture is alive till date only because of the tenant farmers who come from the lower starta of the society,” he said.
He added that the State government had not paid the compensation to the tenant farmers who lost their crops in the Hudhud cyclone. He appealed the government to recognise the tenant farmers and issue loan eligibility cards to them along with the farmers. He also demanded that the government to provide input subsidy and other benefits to the tenant farmers and protect them from the private money lenders.
The Dalit Bahujan Front founder K Vinaykumar said that most of the tenant farmers belonged to the weaker sections. “The farmers with the land holdings live in cities while these tenant farmers toil on the lands and produce foodgrains, provide employment to thousands of agriculture labourers,” he said and asked the government to give priority to the tenant farmers in the agriculture sector.
The Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Labourers’ Association president V Venkateswarlu, CITU leader V Krishna Mohan and others spoke. The tenant farmers from all 13 districts were present at the meeting.
