Telangana rejects Centre's raw deal, to seek better price for chilli

HYDERABAD: Unhappy over the raw deal it received from the Centre for its chilli farmers, the Telangana government has decided not to avail the Market Intervention Scheme (MIS) offered by the Centre unless the purchase price is hiked to Rs 7,000 and quantity increased to 3.5 lakh metric tonnes.
The state government on Thursday dashed off a letter to the Union food ministry stating that the A grade chilli is being purchased at Rs 6,500 per tonne in the open market and questioned the rationale behind the offer to give Rs 5,000 for the same.
“We have requested for a rate of Rs 7,000 per tonne and also to purchase half of the total production. Assuming that the total production is 7 lakh tonnes, if 50 per cent gets sold in the open maket, the remaining 3.5 lakh needs to be purchased by the Centre,“ C Parthasarathi, agriculture principal secretary, told TOI.
The state government has been facing severe criticism for not making adequate arrangements to purchase red chillis from the farmers. The sudden fall in the price has distressed the farmers who resorted to violent protests in Khammam and Warangal.
The state government is also puzzled over the lack of clarity over the grading of chillis. In the open market, A grade chillies are still getting a reasonable price while prices of B and C grade chillis have almost crashed. The agriculture department estimated that more than 35 per cent of the produce come in the B and C grades because of which most chilli farmers are being hit.
“Chilli power is packed and sold at Rs 22 per 100 gram in Heritage Food stores and Rs 35 in Reliance Fresh stores. This means the retail stores are collecting Rs 35,000 per tonne while the farmer is being offered only Rs 5,000 per tonne. This is not the correct way to handle the crisis,“ said former Union agriculture minister Ummareddy Venkateswarlu.
An even more worrying thing is lack of storage facilities in both the Telugu states.While AP has a total storage capacity of 15 lakh tones for all products, T has 5 lakh tonne capacity. To make matters worse, red gram, cotton, fruits and other agri products have already filled up in these godowns making it difficult to find space for the 7 lakh tons of red chillis.
The state government is now examining a proposal to offer a bonus from the state government if the Centre fails to come to the rescue of the chilli farmers.
The agriculture and marketing department is now enumerating the number of farmers and quantity of red chillis to be purchased to finalise the amount to be spent.