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Inaugurating the first ever, Progressive Punjab Agriculture Summit (PPAS) in Mohali, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal stressed upon the need of separate budget for agriculture sector on the lines of Railway Budget to solve the problems pertaining to agriculture sector and farmers.
“Since over 55% of the population is dependent on agriculture, there is an urgent need to address their problems and to make farming remunerative. In order to address the problems, I suggest that there should be separate budget for the Agriculture sector ,” he added.
Addressing the gathering the Chief Minister said, “ The need of the hour is to completely overhaul the centre’s policy in order to safeguard the interest of farmers.” He also added that the plan allocation to agriculture sector should be enhanced to 10% from 3.7% at present to give a fillip to this sector.
Holding the UPA led government at center guilty of ruining the farmers of the state, he said that due to the exorbitant hike in agriculture inputs coupled with the non remunerative MSP, the peasantry of the state was on the verge of economic disaster.
He asked the Centre to implement agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan’s formula to hike MSP by providing a margin of 50% over the cost of production to the farmers to ensure remunerative prices of their produce. He informed since agriculture is becoming non-remunerative, about one lakh farmers left farming in Punjab alone
Besides taking other measures, he suggested that farmers should be given loan at low rate of interest including short term and long term to make farming remunerative.
In order to promote diversification in Punjab, he added that the Centre must grant Rs 5000 crore for diversification in the state. He added, ‘ We have written a letter to the centre government to give Rs 5000 crore for diversification, so that we can diversify and cultivate other crops. In addition to this, the centre should fix MSP of Maize and Soyabean to promote these crops.” He also added that there should be capital subsidy to promote agro-processing or food processing in the country.
It is worth mentioning that the summit was organized with a view to offer a healthy platform to transform the lives of farmers especially the small and marginal ones by evolving consensus to chalk out a pro-farmer action plan for the overall agriculture development in the country after marathon discussions with internationally acclaimed agri-experts economists, researchers and scientists besides eminent political leaders to safeguards the interests of the beleaguered peasantry which was passing through a deep crisis.
The summit was attended by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhliesh Yadav, Agriculture Ministers of Gujarat, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chander Babu Naidu etc.
