The new government claims it is committed to the farmers' cause and is determined to bring down input costs so that farming can become more viable again. Besides waving off electricity fees, the new administration is also promising to provide better quality seeds to the farmers and to crack down on suppliers of spurious fertilisers and pesticides. "We are trying to do all we can to sensitise the district administration and get them to reach out to the farmers and tell them about all the new incentives we have planned for them," N. Rahuveera Reddy, minister for agriculture, told Outlook.
He claims the government is also extending an additional Rs 11,000 crore to the co-operative banks to provide more low interest loans to farmers. Also, banks and other lending agencies are being instructed to slow down their loan recovery process. However, the government has little control over the unregulated moneylenders on whom a majority of the smaller farmers are dependent on. "They storm into the villages and abuse the farmers and humiliate them in very foul language before their family and neighbours. They even harass them by setting their goons on them," says Satheesh.
But how to save the farmers? The state's cumulative revenue deficit for the last nine years is a staggering Rs 20,000 crore. Now an additional Rs 2,000 crore will have to be found to fund free electricity to the farming sector over the next five years. There will also be a new burden of about Rs 1,100 crore on the exchequer because of the waiver of dues. "In the end all the Chandrababu Naidus and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddys can say whatever they want but in reality there is precious little they can deliver because the state is bankrupt," say Chengala Reddy.
Meanwhile a committee is being set up which will determine which were real cases of suicide since this government came to power. Whatever its findings in rural Andhra Pradesh, among the desperate and the impoverished, money is more precious than life.
