Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 93: Why Do Farmers Always Suffer Losses In Your Rule, Chandrababu?

Timmapalem, Prakasam district: Women belonging to Malapaduku village approached me this morning on my padayatra. They complained that though their village had no drinking water supply and they suffered heavily on account of this, liquor flowed freely in the Chandrababu Naidu regime. Their complaints to officials for drinking water went unheard.They told me, “Anna men get drunk, come home and become violent. They do not discriminate between mother, wife, sister and daughter when it comes to raining abuses on them in a drunken state. Domestic violence is a regular occurrence on account of liquor consumption.” “It is we, women who go out to do menial work and earn some money to run our households, but because of their addiction to alcohol men snatch away whatever we have earned to quench their thirst for alcohol. All our hard-earned money is going to liquor shops.” they said.

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Families have been ruined and the fabric of social life in villages has been destroyed, thanks to the proliferation of liquor shops. These women had staged protests and conducted agitations for three months. They went and explained the situation to District collectors and excise officials, but in vain. TDP leaders at the local level objected to the villagers holding a public meeting to pass a resolution against liquor shops in the village, implicated women in false cases for opposing the liquor policy of the government and for standing up against the mushrooming of liquor shops in villages. They went so far as to cut off water supply to the houses of such protesting women, as also denied them the benefits of welfare schemes. What sort of tyranny is this? My conviction to ban liquor got strengthened even more.

Narsimha Rao of Garlapeta had filed an application for a transformer in 2016 and received a sanction letter in 2017. He promptly submitted a demand draft of Rs.15,000 to get it processed and installed. A year later he is still waiting for the transformer! There is no one to listen to his pleas or to attend to his grievances. When he asked for a refund, there was no response from the authorities. There are more than 4000 such farmers, I was told. This alone highlights the attitude of the Chandrababu Naidu government towards farmers.

Eucalyptus oil farmers met me and told me how the farmers of this arid region suffered due to inadequate water supply to their crops. They said that they are wilting under the losses they have been suffering with no help forthcoming from the government. With flouride contamination compounding their problems and without minimum support price, farmers are driven to the brink of penury.

The farmers told me that during my father, the late Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s period, eucalyptus oil fetched Rs. 4,200 a tonne, whereas currently, thanks to the nexus between traders and middlemen, the price fell steeply to Rs. 1,800.

Farmers who spoke at an interactive session in the evening elaborated on the issues plaguing them—water supply for agriculture, flouride-related problems, among others. Dairy farmers are an equally worried lot. The Chandrababu Naidu regime has wrought serious damage to agriculture on all fronts.

I have a question for the chief minister—Why is it that farmers suffer the most in your rule? Why does agriculture reel under crisis after crisis each time you are at the helm of affairs?