Hyderabad:Ahead of the Cabinet meeting on January 4, where the proposal for the Rythu Bharosa farmer assistance scheme is scheduled to be discussed, farmer organisations and agricultural worker unions under the banner of Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) have called on the government to fulfill its promises to tenant farmers and agricultural workers.
They demanded the implementation of the Telangana Land Licensed Cultivators Act to recognise tenant farmers and provide them with required support.
At a press conference in Hyderabad on Friday, the SKM leaders criticised the government for failing to implement its election guarantees, and expressed disappointment over the decisions made by the Rythu Bharosa cabinet Sub-Committee without state-level consultations with farmer associations.
They alleged that the sub-committee's recommendations ignored the majority opinion gathered during public consultations in five districts. Many participants had called for recognising tenant farmers, restricting Rythu Bharosa eligibility to landholdings below 10 acres, and prioritising actual cultivators over landowners.
“While we welcome the government’s stand that only cultivated lands will receive Rythu Bharosa support, how can they ignore the actual cultivators,” the manch asked.
“The process being proposed by the government such as taking affidavits from land owners will make the situation even more difficult for tenant farmers,” the farmer leaders said.
According to them, tenant farmers constitute 36 per cent of Telangana’s farming community but have received less than one per cent of the government’s `54,000 crore in farmer support funds since the inception of the state.
The SKM also demanded that the promised `12,000 payments be extended to all agricultural workers, including those owning less than an acre of land, without restrictive conditions such as completing 100 days of work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
