Cannot trust cash-strapped to give subsidy: Punjab farmers

Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 28

The state government’s move to abolish free power to the agriculture sector and replace it with the direct cash transfer of subsidy after farmers pay the bill has stirred a hornet’s nest.

Given the precarious fiscal health of the state, farmers are skeptical that power subsidy, which is the major input cost, will not be paid regularly.

Farmers have threatened to oppose the move, saying they will be forced to pay the bills without any assurance of timely release of subsidy.

Jagmohan Singh, general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Dakaunda), said: “The government’s decision will further push indebted farmers towards ruin, which, in turn, could lead to higher incidence of suicides. How can we trust the cash-strapped government to give us subsidy when the state itself has never paid subsidy to the PSPCL?”

This year, Punjab is to pay Rs12,246.94 crore as power subsidy; this includes Rs8,275 crore to be paid to the agriculture sector.

“Only those with a tubewell connection get free power. Almost 45 per cent of marginal farmers (69,485 out of 1.54 lakh marginal farmers) and 17 per cent of small farmers (35,264 out of 2.07 lakh farmers) do not own tubewells. Thus, they are bereft of subsidy. If the DBT is to be granted to only those farmers owning tubewells, others will again be left out,” said agro-economist Ranjit Singh Ghuman.

He further said, “On an average, medium and large farmers have two to three tubewells. They get the subsidy. If the criterion is the size of operational landholding, there is no data on the number and size of owned holdings. The size of holdings depends on leased-in and leased-out land, and, in Punjab, 25 per cent of land is leased out by way of oral deals.”

A senior officer said the Group of Ministers (GoM) would consider every factor before implementing the decision on the DBT of power subsidy. He, however, assured that a targeted approach would be followed to ensure that the DBT benefitted the most-needy farmers.