Farmers in Rajasthan have criticised the Ashok Gehlot government’s decision to impose a new tax of 2 per cent on sale and purchase of agricultural commodities in mandis, saying this tax, introduced ostensibly for the welfare of farmers, is actually forcing them to sell their produce at much lower prices.

“Theoretically, this tax has to be paid by traders who deal in agricultural commodities, but the reality is that farmers have to bear the cost,” said Dulichand Borda, Vice-President of All India Kisan Sabha in a memorandum to Chief Minister as well as to Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Kailash Chaudhary.

The Rajasthan government introduced the Farmer Welfare Fee on Wednesday. This is in addition to the existing mandi development fees that range from 0.1 to 1.6 per cent, depending on the commodities sold.

Traders’ levy

“The tax is to be paid by traders and not by farmers. This has been very clearly mentioned in the Ordinance,” said a senior official of Rajasthan Agriculture Marketing Board. The government, he said, has already set up a corpus to offer financial support to farmers in distress and already ₹1,500 crore has been disbursed.

Rampal Jat, another prominent farmer leader from the State, asked the government to desist from imposing it as it can bring down the prices that farmers get for their produce. As a mark of protest, all grain and vegetable mandis, oil mills and dal mills in the State are closed for five days from Wednesday.

According to Borda, traders have already started deducting it from payments made to farmers. “After the implementation of this Ordinance, the price of wheat in the mandis of Kota division has dropped by ₹50 per quintal,” he said.

Farmers’ expectations

The farmers have been expecting the Central and State governments to purchase their entire produce at minimum support price. Currently, as the procurement by the government agencies is just nominal, farmers have to sell their produce in mandis.

Instead of helping farmers who struggled to ensure food security in these trying times, the Central and State governments are creating more difficulties for farmers by increasing excise duty on diesel as well as imposing this tax, Borda added.