Chennai:Raising the bar and to set ambitious goals for the farm sector, the DMK government of MK Stalin is all set to present a separate budget for agriculture. And, Tamil Nadu becomes the third state, after neighbouring Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to come up with this exercise, to erase the entrenched notion that agriculture continues to be neglected and hence deserves special attention.
A poll promise of the DMK, the decision to have a separate farm budget has been welcomed by parties across the political spectrum. State agriculture minister MRK Panneerselvam will present the Agriculture Budget on August 14, a day after finance minister PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan presents the state budget, a paperless e-Budget.
Enthusiasm has replaced despondency, giving rise to huge expectation among farmers, both small and large farmers as well as leaders of farmers' associations with all of them coming out with a wish list. Foremost among them is the demand for adequate investment and simplified credit facilities as well as access for marketing so as to lift the poor and impoverished farmer from poverty.
That Indian agriculture is a gamble of monsoons is known to every student of economics. And in the last decade, the Agriculture sector in Tamil Nadu has been in a crisis primarily due to successive cyclones – Vardha, Nilam, Gaja among others - and severe drought that hit the state. Given this scenario, various farmers' fora and leaders of agricultural associations and agronomists have come out with concrete suggestions and demands.
Budgetary allocation for agriculture during the AIADMK government in 2019-2020 was Rs 10,550.48 Cr and in 2020-21, it was Rs 11, 894.48 Cr, a marginal increase. In 2021-2022, it was more or less same with Rs 11,982 Cr. This drew criticism that the government had not hiked the budgetary allocation despite the pandemic. Now, the farmers' leaders insist that the allocation should not be less than Rs 15,000 Cr to meet the needs of the sector, which had to be treated on a par with the industry.