Where is it?
Farmers’ litigations: reduce pending court cases.
Farmers must be compulsorily insured and also their healthcare insurance.
Farmers are also prone to much litigation. So, please take steps to reduce the number of litigations in which farmers, both the sides, sometimes as tenants and land lords or sometime out of rivalries or jealousies in claiming ownership title or sometimes simply grabbing lands as a way to accumulate wealth through illegal means. You see there are many issues in the running of the government. One is to impress the public that the incumbent Alamelu has openly said that the payments of premium by the government itself has been delayed for various reasons. In our view one important reason is the huge volume of business involved. Another one is the unwillingness on the part of farmers to get their premium payments debited from their crop loan accounts.
It is human psychology that we are only interested to get the insurance policy encased at times of emergency but when it comes to paying the premium we delay payments! Anyway, it is at times a tough job to get the bureaucratic machinery deliver results.
India is a democracy all right. But then it is also the world’s biggest bureaucratic machine! Take any case at any time. You see the bureaucratic wheels within wheels. Take the reports of the CVC, Central Vigilance Commissioner. His report for 2017 shows the number of complaints had come down from what it was in the previous year, almost half the number! Why? Is it because the corruption disease gone! No, no!
Simply because the public had lost trust in the machinery had gone!
Who believes that corruption is an issue with the government?
There are no institutions like Lokpal, Lokayukta or other institutions. Also, who is now investigating cases, the CBI, ED and Income Tax raids people only who have some public exposure. Most of the anti-corruption cases are all of this type only. Only in some states like Karnataka where some occasional raids take place and the bureaucrats caught with hoards of cash, gold, flats and agricultural lands.
In the neighbouring state, TN, there was a court case against the incumbent CM. The state deployed its own anti-corruption department and it gave, what else you expect, a clean chit to the incumbent CM! This is becoming a joke.
A state which was rooted in large scale corruption, where the Chief
Secretary to the government was caught red-handed with cash in his official rooms is let off; no one knows what happened to the case! Much more serious corruptions have been let off; we don’t know where the cash parcels in a lorry were taken for safe custody!
So, what chance for farmers to get their crop insurance scheme succeeds?
The rural scenario is not a happy one when it comes to really turn farmers into a well-behaved lot. Farmers have their own limitations as a responsible citizenry. What we need a new type of propaganda for the farmers to safeguard themselves from many pitfalls.
There is a book before us, titled, Vidows of Vidharba by Kota Neelima that examines the suicide of farmers of this cotton belt of Maharashtra.
The state machinery classifies the farmers into different categories, farmers, cultivators and agri labourers.
This is silly, to say the least!
All this is statistical jugglery to deny genuine victims of the tragedy that is agriculture in India.
There is no point in spending time on the finer versions of any academic or journalistic study. The only way our seems to be pay directly to the affected families by some summary enquiry, not raising the troublesome minor details.
Route all your payment through the panchayat raj channels. Make panchayats the ground level institutions and let the villagers know the government has done an honest job.
Agriculture ministers in particular in the states must be persons who have large sympathy with the rural people and must be seen by the villagers occasionally.
Unless wide publicity is given in the TV channels and rural media and interaction with the stakeholders who include the panchayat leaders as well as teachers, journalists and social workers, the real status of the rural distress can’t be gauged and reliefs reached.
Honest and truthful government servants must be mentioned and given promotions out of the routine and only some sort of semi-independent interventions are made, the bureaucratic machinery and the lethargy of the elected representatives too can’t do much.
Now, new elements have entered into the public debate, that of the rise and role of the criminals, as elected representatives.
Hopefully, the new special courts to try the criminal politicians must help to stop the further deterioration of the rural political space.
With the increasing. Land holdings have come down to 1.5 hectare and this is going down further three-fold in the last few years.
So, problems of Indian farmers is not going to be easy for any politician, or party.
Let us recognise the grim reality of rural India. It is not a pleasant sight!