(Ashok Babu)
The central government will present the budget of this year 1st February 2020. As the Modi govt. has been claiming in its previous budgets that focus of the budget was on village, poor and farmer, so now farmers will also have to make special efforts to take advantage of the schemes. The Prime Minister desiring to doubling income of farmers by 2022, but it will be possible when the farmer of the country will be able to become aware and take advantage of all these schemes.
Farmers will have to form public partnership with the government. We should not depend only on govt. machinery system for the schemes. There it becomes very necessary to analysis what these plans are and how they will benefit farmers, how will it increase the income of the farmer. Today it is required to farmers to understand the upcoming budget and look what will be their interest in the budget.
As we think about the budget, one picture emerged in our mind that how much we earned and how much we spent in particular year. The budgets of the people who get the salary at the beginning of the month, they calculate household, medicine, travel expenses etc., but the budget of the farmer is slightly different, in fact the budget of the farmer is made in a state of confusion, he does not know what price of his production will get, on which price their crop will be sold, which income he will get by selling the crop so this is a big question.Firstly he will prepare his crop, after selling the crop in the market he gets the money. In today farming input cost has increased a lot.
When we have reached in 2020 where smart phones are available in every farmer's home mostly, today it is necessary that farmers should gather information about government schemes by themselves and make every effort to take benefits. On the other hand, the government should also spread all the agricultural related schemes to the farmers through agriculture extension. Let's try to understand the budget in three levels.
In the first level, the farmer prepares the field, purchases manure and seeds, where he will need the capital; Government is helping farmers by providing Kisan Samman Nidhi putting an amount of Rs. 2 thousand every quarter directly into their bank account. It will help for small and marginal farmers. It will bless to such farmers who are producing merely edible grains, not for sell. In the last budget the govt. made a provision of Rs.10 lakh crore for the Kisan Credit Card Scheme, through which the farmer will be able to take a loan from the bank at a very low interest rate.
After the Green Revolution, it is very important to know the health of soil, undoubted farmers increased production but using unnecessarily fertilizers spoiled the health of soil. The govt. launched the Soil Health Card scheme to improve soil health. Farmers can check their soil and find out which nutrients are required. After looking Soil Health Card, the farmer will avoid putting unnecessary fertilizers and will reduce the cost of farming.
Let's talk about the second level; the farmer needs irrigation in preparing the crop. Progressive farmer is giving importance to new techniques such as drip irrigation, sprinkler methods, in which method we save water with benefit of high yield crop. In the last budget, a provision has been made to develop micro irrigation system with a budget of Rs. 5 thousand crore.
The government has completed 71 irrigation projects to strengthen irrigation system which were stuck from decades. Under MNREGA scheme, the work of digging ponds in the villages will raise water level. Slogan given by Govt. Water to every field and Work to each hand is effective. In 2017 budget the Govt. increased agricultural irrigation fund by 100 percent and reached 40 thousand crore. In the last budget, a provision of Rs. 7377 crore was made for the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojna.
The farmer has a big dilemma with crop spoiled due to natural calamities like drought, flood, storm or insects. Crop insurance scheme was implemented more effectively by the govt. to overcome this fear with minimum premium. Crops insured by paying 1.5 percent premium for Rabi crops and 2 percent for Kharif. In the last budget, Rs. 13240 crore was allocated for the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojna Scheme. There is also a provision to compensate for the loss after harvesting. Farmers can insure the crop offline through bank or online with portal.
Now we come on third level marketing, this is the level where the farmer needs to become more aware. The farmer will have to recognize the new marketing technic, how to sell his crop in good price, know about Minimum Support Price of the crop, what platform the government is providing for marketing. In the last budget, the government made a provision to establish 10,000 Farmers Producers Organization (FPO) in the next 5 years. Govt. providing online trading platform for agricultural marketing through Electronic National Agriculture Market (E-NAM), in which 585 agro markets (mandi) of the country have been integrated.
The effort of the government is to increase competition and provide fair price of their crop by any means. In order to increase employment in the village, in the last budget, provision was made to set up 80 livelihood business incubators and 20 technology business incubators for agricultural rural area. Today, country needs 10 thousand wholesale markets and 20 thousand rural retail markets. For which private sector participation in agricultural marketing will also have to be encouraged.
It is being claimed by the government that MSP kept doubled the input cost of crop. Talking about the statistics, only 6 percent of the crops have been purchased on MSP, so what happened to the remaining crops? For this it is very essential to digitize all the agro market of the country and keeping record at what price the crop of the farmer is sold. It will help to prevent the crop from selling below to MSP. The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices assesses the MSP by the average value of all costs across the country, creating a discrepancy as the costs for each region vary.
For a long time, agricultural experts have been raising the demand that agricultural subject should be include in the concurrent list, which will strengthen the concept of one India-one market. By including agriculture in the concurrent list, the central government will have direct control and the state government will be more accountable.
From the Budget 2020, the farmer hopes that there will be a special focus on agriculture. The government will increase capital investment in agricultural infrastructure. Provide more number of jobs by providing skill training tools to the farmers. In the field of agricultural education, India is counted among the most backward countries, even among only 12 percent science students, only 0.65 percent students register in agricultural science. Agricultural education and agricultural extension works need to be accelerated.
(The writer is Senior Journalist, working for Rajya Sabha TV Channel acquires massive information on Agriculture, farming sectors).