Andhra Pradesh
TDP Government – Promises and performance
On 11 th of April this year,
Elections were heldin Andhra
Pradesh to elect state and central
governments. In this scenario, let
us analyse the promises, commit-
ments and performance of the
Telugu Desam Party which came to
power in 2014 aligned with BJP.
Now for the 2019 election
campaign, TDP and its supremo
Chandrababu Naidu are trying to
focus around only two issues:
capital region development and
Polavaram project. He talked less
of the agricultural crisis and
industrial backwardness and has
his complete focus on popular
schemes.
Farm Loan Waiver:
Out of the promised Rs. 24,000
crore farm loan waiver, the govt
managed to adjust only Rs. 15,147
crore in these 4.5 years. Rs.9,000
crores loan waiveris still pending.
It is declaring that it has benefitted
58.29 lakh farmers, including those
in the horticulture. Even though
they have cleared the loans that
are below Rs. 50,000 in the first
phase, most of the loans are paid
in instalments, directly into the
farmer’s accounts. This led the
banks to put their names in the
defaulters list. That is, even before
their old loans are cleared,they are
doomed into future debts. Telugu
Desam rulers failed to take even a
single step towards making
agriculture crisis free.
There are 32 lakh tenant
farmers in the state who are mostly
SC,ST,BC and rural poor. 80% of
the land under irrigation is
cultivated by tenant farmers only.
Most of the production is done by
them, but still they don’t receive the
state and central governments’
farm loans, input subsidies, loan
April, May - 2019
eligibility cards, farm insurance
schemes. They don’t even get
those benefits doled out during the
elections. Because they are not the
land owners, they are the land
tillers!
While the farmers are incurring
Rs. 30,000-35,000 per acre, on
every sown crop (chilli, tobacco,
cotton, ground nut, subabuletc.),
the state and central governments
assurances of 9000 and 6000
respectively are just a mockery. In
these 5 years, the govt has
provided all opportunities to
capitalists to exploit the farmers,
destroy farming, make farmers
debt-ridden and finally commit
suicide.
Land reforms and agriculture
reforms
As per the orders given to
Indian rulers by World Bank and
IMF way back in 1996, 40 crore
rural population have to be
migrated to cities within 20 years.
They said that, lands of huge value
are in the hands of incompetent
peasantry and suggested that they
have to be evicted from their land
and made into migrant labour. The
small peasant economy should be
replaced by the contract or
corporate farming, thus ran the
dictate by the imperialist financial
organisations.
Our rulers implemented these
orders by setting up SEZs,
industrial corridors, export
processing zones etc., by grabbing
public, private and assigned lands.
They started land pooling on an
enormous scale in the entire
country. The ministry of industry is
utilized for this purpose. In many
places people revolted against
these coercive land pooling. To
silence these the then UPA
government, in their final year,
brought the Land acquisition act,
2013 which has some safe guards
for the people.
The Chandra Babu govern-
ment came up with a new Land
acquisition policy claiming to be
better than the 2013 Land
acquisition act and initiated land
acquisition at massive scales. The
previous congress government in
the state has acquired 1.27 lakh
acres of land for SEZs and gave
them for capitalists. Acquisitions of
land for VANPIC, Coastal corridor,
Kakinada SEZ etc occured during
the YSR regime. The present TDP
government didn’t stop at acquiring
land for those pending projects but
vastly extended it to all districts. In
the past 5 years, Chandra Babu
gave orders to collectors to pool
30 lakh acres for the land bank,
with a target of at least 2 lakh acres
per district. Most of the 30 lakh
acres of land bank identified in
various districts is assigned land
and belongs to the poor.
The produce from the small
land holdings is still a significant
part of the rural economy. The
successive governments are rising
the input costs by reducing the farm
subsidies, and not providing the
minimum support price by
withdrawing
the
public
procurement agencies from the
market. the peasants are content
even if they get their labour costs
and are providing the nations
population with food security while
their stomachs are half-filled. Now
the strategy of the capitalists is to
further weaken these small tenant
farmers andalienate them from
their lands.
Concentration of land in rural
areas has intensified. Like the
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