A day ahead of the general budget, the Jai Kisan Andolan, a peasants' rights movement launched by Swaraj Abhiyan, today released its own 'Agriculture Budget' to draw attention towards issues faced by farmers.
Addressing reporters here on the sidelines of a two-day 'Act Now - National Convention on Corruption', Swaraj Abhiyan leader and the movement's convener Yogendra Yadav accused the Centre of not paying attention towards farmers' issues, which prompted them to come up with, "an alternate budget."
"Tomorrow, when Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley) will present budget, he will deliver beautiful dialogues for farmers. But how much fund he will allocate remains to be seen.
"But ahead of that, we are releasing the Agriculture Budget, dealing with farmers' issues and (suggesting) fund allocations for the same," he said.
The Andolan's budget, Yadav added, focuses on three issues mainly: constituting a Commission to ensure farmers get minimum support price (MSP), offering Rs 2 lakh bailout package for peasants and providing funds to complete irrigation projects.
"There is a deepening agrarian crisis in the country. In 2008-09, the government had given Rs 3 lakh crore bailout package to industries in view of global economic crisis. Similarly, we are proposing in our budget a Rs 2 lakh bail-out package for farmers. This money can be used to waive farmers' loans," he added.
Yadav also stressed on encouraging organic farming in the country and sought to undertaking long-term measures to tackle drought situation.
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the latter's appeal for efforts to double incomes of farmers by 2022, Yadav said, "It is good that he is talking about it. But let's see how much fund the government actually allots for farmers tomorrow."
Addressing a farmers' rally in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly today, Modi pitched for converting farmers' challenges into opporunities and urged states to give priority to implementation of the "roadmap" for boosting the agriculture sector with a target of doubling the income of farmers by 2022.
