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At a time when cheque books are fading away and digital banking takes centrestage, banks have printed 58 lakh cheques exclusively for distribution to farmers. The Telangana government is helping farmers meet input costs by giving them ₹4,000 each for every acre through specially printed cheques as part of its ‘Rythu Bandhu’ scheme.
“There are no precedents to this mega exercise, to our knowledge. We have been in mission mode for the last one month to complete all modalities,” Swaminathan, Chief General Manager, SBI (Hyderabad Circle), told BusinessLine .
The State government had allocated ₹12,000 crore in its 2018-19 Budget for the programme, which seeks to give the financial assistance in the Kharif and Rabi seasons.
The massive cheque distriction programme, which will cover over 10,000 villages across the State, will officially be kicked off on May 10 at Huzurabad by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao. He has invited regional political leaders such as MK Stalin and Mamata Banerjee, Akilesh Yadav and Navin Patnaik to attend the event.
Banks had to overcome logistical issues to get the cheques printed as security paper was scarce, Swaminathan said, adding that SBI, which is also the convernor of the State Level Bankers’ Committee, will be distributing about 44 per cent of the total cheques, amounting to ₹2,500 crore. In all, eight banks are involved in the scheme.
The cheques are customised with the logo of the Telangana State government, the name of the farmer, extent of land owned, the sop amount, unique ID number and Aadhaar number. “These are order cheques payable in cash on identification of farmers on the basis of their Pattadar passbooks,” Swaminathan said, adding that the banks have handed over the cheques to mandal officers for distribution.
While agreeing that the cash crunch will prove an issue in honouring the cheques, the SBI official said that on the request of the State government, the Reserve Bank of India will be supplying cash to the tune of ₹2,000 crore. As of now, banks in Telangana have about 50 per cent of the cash needed for the scheme
The government had preferred to make the payments through cheques rather than a Direct Benefit Transfer. “The government is of the view that the visible impact of the scheme will be more if the cheques are given physically,” said Swaminathan. .
Some farmers’ leaders, however, flayed the government for excluding tenant farmers from the scheme.
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