Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "immediately" come to the rescue of the beleaguered farmers who have suffered extensive damage to their crops following unseasonal rains and other vagaries of weather in the region.
The Chief Minister requested a comprehensive package of relief and compensation measures for farmers whose crop had been affected. Badal said that for the first time, the farmer needs his country to stand by him in his "hour of extreme adversity".
Badal also said the norms for providing relief under such conditions also need to be changed and brought in line with current ground realities and economic compulsions face by the farmers.
He pointed out that there was a dip in the quality of grain of wheat as a consequence of loss in its luster because of adverse weather conditions.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, copies of which were released to the media here, Badal called for bailing out the farmers from the current crisis by recasting the government policies drastically to regenerate farm economy with a long term agricultural policy re-orientation.
He said that the farmers faced "a tragedy of frightening proportions" because of natural calamities on the one hand and a long series of disastrous and anti-farmer policies of successive Congress governments the Centre.
"For more than half-a-century, the brave and patriotic peasantry answered every distress call of the nation and always took pride in sacrificing everything.
"But now, it is repayment time for the country. For the first time, the farmer needs his country to stand by him in his hour of extreme adversity and distress. The government must come to his rescue and repay a part of the debt which we always owe him," said Badal.
The Chief Minister said that no cut should be applied to the price of the farmer's yield on this account because he was not responsible for this adverse effect caused by natural calamity which was beyond his control.
Secondly, said Badal, there had been a fall in the overall yield of crop this year. As this too had been caused by reasons beyond the farmer's control, he should not be made to suffer for this. For this, the farmer should be paid adequate bonus to off set the loss in yield.
The Chief Minister further said that all these factors that followed natural calamity had severely hit the farmer's economic plight.
