Farmer unions threaten stir

CHANDIGARH: The modest raise in the minimum support price (MSP) of paddy for the ensuing kharif procurement season has triggered widespread resentment among farmers in Punjab.
Their general perception is that the government is just "testing waters" and will ultimately yield to farmers��� pressures and revise the MSP substantially as the government itself has described it "ad hoc".
While farmers��� organisations have cried foul and threatened an agitation, the ruling SAD has condemned the union government for announcing MSP far less than Rs 1,050 what the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP) had recommended. Its youth wing has threatened to gherao UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in this connection.
"For the first time, the Union government has announced ad-hoc MSP and the rationale given is absurd," said Balbir Singh Rajewal of the Bharti Kisan Union (BKU). Instead of relying on the recommendations of the surplus-paddy-producing states, the government has given credence to the the states contributing negligible to the Central pool," argued Rajewal.
Former MP Bhupinder Singh Mann said that in real terms the MSP for paddy this year had been slashed, given the whooping inflation. "Either the MSP should be based on scientific calculation of input costs plus a reasonable profit to farmer or he be given the market price. But the government gave this on ad-hoc basis," said Mann while accusing the Union government of neglecting thefarm sector.
Farmer leaders across the board point out that even the recommendations of the CACP were based on a three-month-old situation, which has undergone a sea change since then. Inflation is nearly touching double figures; diesel and fertiliser prices have been mounting, besides scarcity of labour and its enormous wage hike.
For transplanting paddy, the wages have gone from Rs 650-Rs 700 last year to Rs 1,400-Rs 1500 this year, pointed out a farmer.
The hike in diesel price alone has neutralised the increase in paddy MSP, said an officer, adding that the farmers would rue sowing paddy this season. But the MSP was announced at a time when the farmer was left with no choice but to go in for paddy, he added.
With the acute power shortage, farmers would be forced to use diesel. Also, the weather too is tricky this year as temperature remained moderate in May and early June and farmers��� apprehend an erratic monsoon this year though the meteorological department had predicted a good monsoon. In the eventuality of low rainfall, the cost of production would further escalate, compounding the miseries of paddy growers in the state.
Despite all these limitations, farmers had hoped for a quantum jump in the MSP, especially when the Union government had been relatively liberal this year in effecting substantial wheat MSP hike. Unlike wheat, which a section a farmers can easily store and sell during lean period, others have no option but to bring their paddy to market soon after harvesting and disposing it at the prevailing MSP.
So, the government is assured of procuring surplus paddy, especially when traders are shy ofentering market because of the ban on export of rice, argued another farmer CS Sidhu.