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The Telangana Rythu Sangham has flayed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for not addressing the inherent challenges that the primary sector is facing.

It said the allocations for the core sector is meagre and not sufficient to remove the bottlenecks. The farmers’ association has organised a roundtable on Friday to discuss the budget proposals. “The sector has been allocated ₹15,780 crore. But, the Investment Support Scheme for farmers takes the lion’s share of ₹12,000 crore, leaving a little for the sector which is dogged by several challenges,” Telangana Rythu Sangham Secretary T Sagar said.

While clearing the loan waiver dues, the government promised that it would take care of the interest burden as well. “But the government has not allocated any funds for the purpose,” he said.

“The government has set an ambitious foodgrain production target of 142 lakh tonnes by 2018-19, while the production in 2017-18 is pegged at 91 lakh tonnes only. How can we achieve the target with meagre allocations to the sector?” he asked.

Land for dalits

On the three-acre land scheme for dalits, the association said the allocation of ₹1,469 crore was very low. “They said they would allocate ₹2,500 crore every year to purchase land for distribution of three acres each for dalits. But only 4,939 out of 9.38 lakh dalit households in the State got the land under the scheme so far,” the association said. The Investment Support Scheme, which sought to provide a financial help of ₹8,000 an acre in a year to farmers, was not covering all the farmers. “It is excluding tenant farmers, who form a significant chunk of farming community, leaving nearly 50 per cent of the farmers from the scheme,” it said.

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