Lashing out at the Centre for “ignoring” the farmer community and issuing a cut in tobacco cultivation, producers of flue-cured Virginia in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have threatened a Punjab-type agitation from December 1. They also threatened to go to court seeking ‘equitable taxation’, compensation for farmers and demanded a CBI enquiry against the “hidden agenda” of foreign-funded anti-tobacco activists.
Blaming higher taxes and pictorial warnings for the 31 per cent annual growth of smuggled tobacco in the Indian market, Chengal Reddy, Chairman, Consortium of Indian Farmers’ Association, said, “for the first time in 100 years, 22 tobacco farmers have committed suicide in the last one year. Of these, 15 suicides were in Andhra Pradesh and seven in Karnataka.”
Addressing a press conference by the Federation of All India Farmer Associations here on Thursday, Reddy said in the 18 months of its rule in the Centre, the Prime Minister had not met even a single farmer delegation. The Federation also displayed smuggled cigarette packs at the press conference, adding that many of these, which enter India from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Dubai among others, did not contain any pictorial or text warning.
BV Javare Gowda, a grower from Karnataka, said, “Foreign powers would like to see India converting from a tobacco exporter to a net importer.”
G Seshagiri Rao, a sugarcane and tobacco farmer from Andhra Pradesh, said, “India is the second largest exporter of quality tobacco earning ₹6,000 crore foreign exchange every year. The production cut in AP will make farmers lose livelihoods and destroy our export opportunity.”