Assam Bud focuses on tea garden workers, farmers

The Assam government today announced interest-free crop loans to farmers and Rs 5,000 incentive to all tea garden workers opening bank account to receive their wages following the demonetisation decision.
Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, whose budget speech was one of the longest and lasted for four hours, emphasised on financial inclusion of all sections, including farmers and tea garden workers.
In the 2017-18 Budget for the state, Sarma rolled out a series of incentives for the tea garden sector and the farmers' community, which has been affected by the decision to demonetise high-value notes.
"We saw a great opportunity to push a less-cash economy at the heights of most challenging times of demonetisation. Prime Minister Narendra Modiji's historic decision to demonetise gave us an opportunity to break 'weekly cash cycle' and bring the banking system to the doorsteps of the tea gardens," he said.

For the financial inclusion of tea garden workers, the 136-page Budget speech proposes to pay Rs 5,000 to each labourer in his or her bank account.
"Initially, Rs 2,500 to each worker, who have opened bank account, and subsequently another Rs 2,500 will be paid to them if the wages are received through the bank account continuously for six months. I have provided Rs 287 crore in the Budget for 2017-18," Sarma said.

The Budget also announced a one-time payment of Rs 12,000 to pregnant women in tea garden areas so that they can look after themselves and the newborn better without compromising on the livelihood of the family.

Sarma said, "I want to propose another ambitious plan today. I propose to earmark at least 5 per cent of the Budget of all the departments, excluding budgetary outlay on salaries, to be spent in the tea garden areas."
This decision will guarantee all-round development of people residing in the tea garden areas, he asserted.
For the farmer community too, the minister announced a slew of measures to increase credit flow in the wake of demonetisation exercise.
"Financial inclusion is the heart of several programmes of our government. The low-level of credit-deposit ratio in Assam leaves a great scope for expansion of credit flow to the rural areas, particularly to the farmers.

For this purpose, the Finance Minister proposed to
allocate Rs 25 crore.
To bring to life the inactive 'Kisan Credit Cards', the state government proposed to introduce a one-time cash incentive of Rs 3,000 per inactive KCC holding farmer if he renews the card.
"Last year, I spoke about providing identity cards to the farmers. In this regard, I am happy to state that this process is at advanced stage and identity cards will be issued to all farmers in the state within the fiscal year 2017-18," he said.
Regarding small tea growers, the budget noted that the land records of such planters are the biggest challenge in monetisation of the land value for investment of funds for improvement.

"Our government will come up with a unique incentive to the small tea growers for settling of the land after fixing a nominal amount of premium, which is Rs 1,000 per bigha for the existing small tea gardens and also for the future start-up small tea gardens," Sarma said.
Further, the minister proposed to reduce the cess on green tea leaf to 10 paise per kg from the existing 15 paise for small growers under the Assam Taxation (On Specified Lands) Act.
On the overall healthcare scenario of the tea sector, the minister said that out of 758 surveyed tea gardens, only 428 (57 per cent) have functional hospital on the premises and 247 (38 per cent) do not even have medical officers.

"Although, initially we announced the institution of 40 dedicated Mobile Medical Units (MMU), the august House shall be happy to note that we are coming up with 80 MMUs only for tea garden areas in this current year itself," he added.
Besides, 150 tea gardens are being covered under PPP mode by government and being provided with Rs 7.5 lakh each for gap financing the deficit in infrastructure, HR and consumables, he said.
Sarma also proposed to increase the reservation of tea garden students in MBBS to 18 seats from this year from the existing eight seats.
"In order to facilitate the completion of school education and to reduce the dropout rates, government has decided to establish 100 new schools in these areas. For this scheme, I propose a provision of Rs 10 crore," he added.

Sarma also proposed to introduce reservation of seats for tea garden students in all higher educational institutions, while existing 670 students pursuing engineering, medical and various other technical courses would be provided financial assistance.
The budget further proposed to construct a 'Rangmanch' in each of 750 tea gardens at the unit cost of Rs 15 lakh to preserve the cultural traditions of tea garden communities.
"The government has made budget provisions for distribution of 1,21,000 energy efficient LED bulbs to 40,400 families. We also propose to provide insurance premium at Rs 12 for 10 lakh beneficiaries registered with Assam Tea Employees Provident Fund Organisation. We propose to extend a grant of Rs 25,000 each to 1,000 Divyangs belonging to tea tribes," Sarma said.

Fulfilling one of the much-hyped election promises of the BJP government, the Budget proposed to provide two- wheelers to the top 1,000 girl students, who pass Higher Secondary Examination 2017, in the next financial year in order to provide easy access to them for higher education and allocated Rs 5 crore for this.