Sukhdev Singh Kokari Kalan, general secretary of BKU (Ugrahan), said that Captain Amarinder Singh had not fulfilled his promise and the policies he is bringing in the budget is ‘suicidal’ for the farmers.
Jalandhar: The farming community, which is under acute depression due to long goining agrarian crisis, were left disappointed as the Congress government in Punjab announced its second budget Saturday. Experts and farmers of Punjab have termed it as a highly ‘insignificant’, ‘minus rating’ and depressive budget for the farming community which, they say, will lead to more and more ‘farmer suicides’ in Punjab in the future. Experts said that in the first budget we understood the helplessness of the government because it was newly formed, but now in the second budget there were big hopes from the government, but this budget too does not bring any relief to the farmers.
They said that in last budget there was provision of Rs 1,500 crore for farmers debt relief but only Rs 370 crore was distributed among the farmers which is around 1/5th of the budget allocation. Calling it an ‘insignificant budget’, former economics professor Punjabi University Patiala and expert of farm issues Professor Gian Singh, said it has nothing for the agricultural labourer and rural artisans. “Also Rs 4,250 crore allocation to pay the debt in budget would not be sufficient to pay the interest of Rs 90,000 crore farm debt,” he said, adding that nothing is there to bring out the farmers from the debt trap of private money lenders.
About the diversification policy, farmer leader Buta Singh Burjgill said that they are announcing that 7,000 families would be supported for diversification of 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) . “Where the state is dedicating 30 lakh hectares under water guzzling rice crops, diversifying of 4,000 hectares area is a biggest joke of this budget concerning diversification,” said Buta Singh.
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