Centre copies TRS' Rythu Bandhu scheme

Hyderabad: The BJP-led NDA government took a leaf out of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi government’s welfare policy for the farm sector, announcing an annual direct income payment of Rs 6,000 for farmers in the country. Presenting the interim budget for 2019-2020 in Parliament on Friday, Union Minister Piyush Goyal, standing in for the ailing Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, announced the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi, which envisages payment of Rs 6,000 in three instalments of Rs 2,000 each. The new scheme is nothing but a replication of the path-breaking ‘Rythu Bandhu’ scheme of the TRS government launched during last Kharif season.

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has been repeatedly saying that a scheme similar to ‘Rythu Bandhi’ will have to be replicated throughout the country given its potential to check farm distress. In the run-up to the budget presentation, the talk in political circles in the national capital centred around the possibility of the NDA government going in for such a scheme.

The NDA scheme will be restricted to small and marginal farmers with land holdings not exceeding five acres, while ‘Rythu Bandhu’ assistance of Rs 4,000 per acre per season is provided across the board to all farmers in the State irrespective of their land holdings. Additionally, the Chief Minister has announced that the assistance would be increased from Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 per acre per season, working out to Rs 10,000 per year from this fiscal.

The Centre’s farm assistance scheme is expected to cover about 12 crore farmers across the country, while Rythu Bandhu benefitted about 58 lakh farmers in Kharif alone.