Farmers are disappointed with the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s election manifesto released on Thursday.

Restricting farm loan waiver benefit to cooperative loans taken by small farmers; not announcing specific support prices for paddy and sugarcane; and promising implementation of ethanol programme while it has not done so in the last five years that it has been in power are glaring shortfalls, the farmers say.

Rivals more liberal Other parties such as the PMK and DMK have outdone the AIADMK in assuring minimum support prices for paddy and sugarcane. The DMK has already announced cooperative loan waiver for small farmers while the PMK and the DMDK-PWF-TMC alliance have gone one better and promised full crop loan waiver, they point out.

AIADMK General Secretary J Jayalalithaa released election manifesto just 10 days ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled for May 16. It is the last of the major political parties in the State to release its election promise.

ADMK promises For agriculture, the most significant assurance is the waiver of cooperative farm loans borrowed by small and marginal farmers and the promise to increase cooperative farm credit flow to ₹ 40,000 crore in the next five years if voted to power.

Jayalalithaa has also promised to provide quality inputs to agriculture, subsidy for micro irrigation, upgrading irrigation infrastructure, hub and spoke model for marketing of horticulture produce and upgrading irrigation infrastructure in Cauvery delta areas.

According to official data the flow of overall crop loans in Tamil Nadu is estimated at about ₹ 69,000 crore out of which the cooperative sector was estimated to disburse about ₹ 5,500 crore which is about 8 per cent of the crop loans.

Both the AIADMK and the DMK have promised to waive crop loans for just the small farmers which would actually cover just about a fraction of the farmers in the State.

‘Divisive policy’ ‘Cauvery’ Dhanapalan, General Secretary of a farmers’ welfare society in the Cauvery delta, a paddy belt, said the political parties have created divisions within the farming community. Irrespective of the size of operations, all farmers face the same problems in terms of pricing, costs, marketing.

“What happens even to small farmers who have borrowed from commercial banks or other financial institutions?” he asked.

The DMK has said the minimum support price for paddy will be hiked to ₹ 2,000 a quintal (100 kg) going up to ₹ 2,500 and the PMK has said it will increase to ₹ 2200 from the present ₹ 1,520. For sugarcane the DMK has assured ₹ 3,500 a tonne from the present ₹ 2,850 and the PMK ₹ 4,000.

But the AIADMK has not made any commitments on pricing.

Pricing issues R Palanivel, district secretary of Cauvery Farmers Protection Society, said the AIADMK does not spell out steps to ensure a viable price for agricultural produce.

If the farmers’ income is augmented, there would be no need to waive farm loans. Subsidies and sops do not reach the beneficiaries. Why should they promise more free power when there is shortage of power, he asked.

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