Rs 12,000 crore for crop investment, prepaid cards for Telangana farmers

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Telangana Government To Allocate Rs. 12,000 cr
For Crop Investment Support
Rs 12,000 crore for crop investment, prepaid
cards for Telangana farmers Chief Minister K
Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday announced that, for
the first time, Rs 12,000 crore would be
allocated exclusive for the agriculture budget,
to be presented in the Assembly in Telangana, for
implementation of its much-talked about Farmers
Investment Support Scheme (FISS), This 12,000
crore would be distributed among 1.42 crore
farmers doing agriculture in about 1.65 crore
acres in Telangana. In the first phase, cheques
for Rs 4,000 would be distributed to each farmer
from mid-May. The government will give pre-paid
cards (pre-loaded bank cards) to the farmers in
second phase to commence in November.
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Farmers can just swipe and avail their money
through pre-paid cards, the chief minister said
while addressing the regional conference of the
newly constituted mandal and district level
farmers coordination committees from 13
districts of southern Telangana. The FISS would
be extended even to horticulture and assigned
lands. There are about 20 lakh acres of assigned
land that is free from all sorts of litigation
and another two lakh acre of assigned land
involved in litigations. CM KCR said agriculture
is a way of life and that it should not be
considered a commercial activity. He attributed
the many years of distress and despair, and
large numbers of suicides triggered by poor
financial conditions, to decades of neglect and
discrimination by successive governments in the
undivided state. He said the fortunes of the
farmers would be revived by the farmers
themselves. Every seed produced by a farmer will
get MSP(minimum support price). The farmers will
sell their agriculture produce at MSP to the
traders at the market yards. If they dont get
MSP, the agriculture coordination committees
headed by MP Gutta Sukhender Reddy as its
president at the State level will buy it at MSP.
Farmers will not lose but gain, CM KCR said. The
investment assistance would be disbursed through
bearer cheques for kharif and for yasangi crops,
and the farmers would be given pre-loaded bank
cards. Neither CM KCR nor the agriculture
minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy can do much.
The farmers coordination committees should
shoulder greater responsibilities. The members
of the committee will be given training at the
Telangana State Institute of Rural Development on
their responsibilities and the approach in
resolving problems of farmers, he said.CM KCR
announced that he would be giving his share of
the investment to support the farmers, and
appealed to all the rich farmers to give it up
too. There are a large number of farmers who are
well-off and from wealthier sections of society
in Telangana and the money from this give it
up would be again used for development of
farmers and agriculture.CM KCR appealed to all
the members of farmer coordination committees
and the farmers to take a vow to transform entire
agriculture activity in Telangana on the lines
of Ankapur village in Nizamabad district, where
the local farmers enjoy good profits and higher
revenue outputs, by adopting latest technologies
and doing planned agriculture activity. Owing to
the new innovations and improved profits, Ankapur
has earned the nickname mini-US among the
farmers.
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