Leftist peasants forums meet Buddhadeb on drought issue

09:09 PM, Sep 15, 2010

 

Kolkata, Sep 15 (PTI): West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was today urged to approach the Centre to declare the 11-drought affected districts as a 'national disaster'."A six-point charter of demands have been placed before the CM in the interest of farmers in 11 affected districts in the state," president of CPI(M) peasants' forum Pashimbanga Pradeshik Krishaksabha Madan Ghosh said.

The chief minister was also urged to waive crop loans for the khariff season, besides extending loans to farmers for the next crop at 4 per cent interest.Regretting that the state government had received only Rs 170 crore against an allocation of Rs 1400 crore from the Centre under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the forum demanded that the Centre release the remainder immediately.It also urged the state government to create more water bodies through panchayat departments in the affected districts, besides supplying the farmers with better quality seeds.The chief minister also elaborated on steps taken by the state government to overcome the drought situation, Ghosh said.

Buddhadeb blames Centre for not releasing MGNREGA fund

BS Reporter / Kolkata September 1, 2010, 0:22 IST

West Bengal's Left Front government, already feeling the heat as 11 districts of the state remain drought-stricken ahead of the expected hustings next year, has trained its guns on the Centre for holding back crucial funds for alternative employment generation through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act (MGNREGA).

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, speaking at the 51st anniversary of the CPI-led food movement here today, said that the Union government is yet to disburse the full amount of Rs 1,400 crore required for MGNREGA.

“I have written to the Prime Minister and told Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, but haven't received the amount yet. If they don't give the money, what will we (state government) tell the farmers? What will these farmers do without work?” he said.

Bhattacharjee, who visited some drought-affected districts of the state last week, had also earlier requested the Centre to send a team to review the situation in these afflicted areas.

Paddy-sowing has not been possible across about 11 lakh hectares in West Bengal, the country's largest rice producer, this year due to a 30 per cent deficit in rainfall.

Although the state government has decided to pump in an additional Rs 50 crore to salvage the situation, alternative employment remains of importance.

Drought-affected West Bengal hit by lack of farm investment

By Romita Datta

LIVE MINT Posted: Tue, Aug 31 2010. 9:26 PM IST

The drought, caused by a 32% shortfall in rain, has affected at least one-fifth of the state’s cultivable land

Burdwan, West Bengal: There’s suddenly a flurry of activity in Karotia, a nondescript village in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. Lately, a lot of politicians and state government officials have been visiting the village, and they say work on a nearly forgotten 14km irrigation canal is going to start soon.

It’s been nearly 36 years since the state government first proposed to dig the canal, recalls Azizur Haque, the local panchayat chief. It was to have brought enough water to irrigate some 5,000 acres of land, benefiting at least 30,000 farmers, he says. Yet, the canal didn’t materialize because the state’s environment department didn’t clear the proposal.

Click here To view a slideshow on problems faced by West Bengal farmers due to decreasing rainfall and government apathy

But thanks to one of their brethren, Karotia’s farmers might not have to wait much longer.

Jitu Bagdi, a farmer from this village, killed himself on 23 August. Hounded by moneylenders, he drank poison after his crop failed because of the drought, says his widow, Rupa Bagdi.

Since then, leaders from across political parties and state government officials are bending over backward to “do meaningful things” for Karotia’s farmers. Besides offering financial support to Rupa Bagdi to launch her own business, the state government has revived the abandoned irrigation canal project.

West Bengal is facing the worst rain shortage in many decades, and the state government has declared a drought in 11 out of 19 districts, including the highly productive ones in the southern part of the state such as Burdwan and Hooghly.

The crop loss has been estimated at Rs 6,250 crore, according to West Bengal’s finance minister Asim Dasgupta, and the people of the state have already begun feeling it—in Kolkata, the price of rice, the most widely consumed foodgrain, has already started rising as the state braces for a foodgrain deficit of 2.7 million tonnes (mt).

The drought, caused by a 32% shortfall in rain, has affected at least one-fifth of the state’s 5.2 million ha of cultivable land, and it shows that West Bengal’s Left Front government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, that has ruled the state for 33 years, has done little to create irrigation facilities, say economists.

Even last year, there was some rain shortage, but it affected only around 200,000 ha.

“It is sad that for a state like West Bengal, where at least 60% of the population is dependent on agriculture, irrigation is not (the) top priority,” says Mihir Rakshit, a former professor of economics at the University of Calcutta. “It’s the same across the country despite so many droughts and crop failures—it’s really unfortunate.”

The state has allocated as little as Rs459 crore for its irrigation department in the current year. What makes matters worse is the fact that the state government doesn’t charge farmers for irrigation facilities such as pump sets and tubewells, which means the department on its own does not generate any revenue, according to a state government official, who did not want to be named.

“It’s not surprising therefore that even in this situation, only 5,938 state government-run minor irrigation facilities (pump sets and tubewells) are currently available,” he said. “We used to have around 6,000 such facilities in 1990. Now it’s fewer because at least 543 are out of commission for want of repair.”

The state government provides irrigation facilities to only around 339,000 ha of land, whereas private facilities serve another 1.3 million ha. The target was to bring at least 3.2 million ha of land in the state under irrigation, he added. “It would take years to get close to that target.”

Besides spending more on irrigation facilities, state governments should encourage research on dry farming and water management, says Rakshit.

West Bengal is now drawing up plans to support “alternative farming”, or cultivation of crops that require less water than paddy, according to Dasgupta. The state government promises to distribute seeds and train farmers, but “alternative farming” can only happen, if at all, next year.

Meanwhile, the state has sanctioned Rs354 crore for immediate relief measures, and has requested Rs600 crore more from the Centre.

The drought couldn’t have come at worse time for the CPM: it is facing an anti-incumbency wave, and assembly polls in the state are due next year.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at the Centre isn’t supportive “for obvious reasons”, says CPM state secretariat member Robin Deb. The Trinamool Congress, the state’s main opposition party, which is a part of the UPA, isn’t pressuring the Centre either, according to Deb.

Subsidies are not long-term solutions, according to Abhirup Sarkar, a professor of economics at Kolkata’s Indian Statistical Institute. “Public investment is the need of the hour,” he said. “Agriculture has been neglected by the West Bengal government for at least 20 years, and that has led to a decline in agricultural productivity.”

The per capita production of foodgrains in West Bengal is 525gm, against the national average of 413gm, but because per capita purchasing power is very low in West Bengal, cases of starvation and poverty are widespread in the state, according to Sarkar.

At least two farmer suicides till now have been blamed on the drought, and both farmers were indebted to money lenders. People are forced to borrow at exorbitant rates because state cooperatives lend only around Rs7,400 per acre, whereas farmers say they need at least Rs45,000.

Banks are doing their bit by rescheduling loans for farmers affected. The country’s biggest lender, State Bank of India, is to defer by a year the repayment of at least Rs500 crore for the drought-hit farmers of West Bengal, according to Suriender Kumar, chief general manager of the bank for its West Bengal circle.

Agriculture Insurance Co. of India Ltd, which provides risk cover to farmers, expects claims from West Bengal this year to be at an all-time high, topping the Rs40 crore paid by it three years ago following floods. Delayed monsoons triggered claims of Rs18 crore last year, according to Dasarathi Singh, the regional general manager of the insurer.

This year, the situation is much worse. But will West Bengal face a famine? That’s the state administration’s biggest fear. It may be considering the fact that last year, when the rain shortfall affected only around 200,000 ha of cultivable land, the state could produce just 13.8 mt of foodgrains, and had nearly no surplus.

Manish Basu contributed to this story.

romita.d@livemint.com

Release Rs 1,400 cr for drought in West Bengal: CPI(M) to Centre

New Delhi:  The CPI(M) today urged the Centre to release Rs 1,400 crore to West Bengal to meet the situation arising out of severe drought in 11 districts, saying the amount was due on account of the employment guarantee scheme.

"We are not asking for charity, neither are we seeking aid from the PM's Relief Fund. We have urged the Centre to release Rs 1,400 crore which is due to the state government on account of the national rural employment guarantee scheme," CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.

His senior colleague Basudeb Acharia said he had met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and informed him that 11 districts of the state, which is the largest rice producer, have had deficient rainfall, ranging from 35 to 55 per cent. "Agricultural workers, who have worked under the scheme, are yet to get their wages for over 20 days as the funds have not been released by the Centre so far," he said.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this regard and also urged Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to send a central team to assess the drought situation, he said.

Asked whether the funds were not released as the state government had not submitted the utilisation certificates for the money sanctioned to it earlier, Acharia said these certificates have been "duly furnished. So there is no problem in releasing the funds. But why is the delay"?

To a question whether Trinamool Congress which was part of the UPA government was creating any obstacle in this process, Yechury said "After all, the government functions on the basis of collective functioning." "We hope that the Centre would release what is due to West Bengal," he said.

Save cultivated crops: Buddhadeb

By Special Correspondent

The Hindu, August 22, 2010 

Chief Minister outlines three tasks, on a tour of drought-hit areas

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, now on a tour of the State's drought-hit areas, has said that the prime task before the government was to save whatever crop had been sown in the 11 districts where cultivation had been badly affected by the errant monsoon. Protecting livelihoods was also very important, he said.

“Our first task now is to save whatever crop has already been cultivated by the farmers in these districts. We have talked to our people in charge of minor irrigation projects and also told people in the State power utilities that we must ensure that power supply remains intact so that minor irrigation facilities can be harnessed to save the little crop that the farmers have been able to cultivate.” The State has already sanctioned Rs. 50 crores towards the repair of existing deep tubewells and digging of new ones.

The Chief Minister, who commenced his tour of the drought-affected districts with Bardhaman, held meetings with district magistrates and panchayat functionaries from of the districts of Bardhaman, Birbhum, Bankura, Purulia and Hooghly.

He said that the second task was to take up early cropping of the winter crop rabi, in areas where sowing has been low. “Three types of alternate crops could be taken up. These were maize, oilseeds and dal (pulses),” he said.

A Central team of agro-scientists is to arrive shortly to conduct soil-tests and distribute seeds of alternate crops in the drought-hit districts. This followed a letter written by Mr. Bhattacharjee in this regard to the Union Agriculture Minister this week.

Mr. Bhattacharjee said that the third task was to create jobs under the 100 days' job scheme to protect the farmers' livelihoods. He said that while in Purulia only 6.5 per cent of the normal acreage has been cultivated, in the cases of two other arid districts – Birbhum and Bankura — the figure was around 33 per cent. The rains have been kinder to Hooghly and Bardhaman, where the deficiency was about 25 per cent. Of the 43 lakh hectares the State planned to cultivate during this season, cultivation on 11 lakh has become uncertain due to adverse weather condition, according to Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta.

Mr. Bhattacharjee was also scheduled to tour Nadia, another affected district where he would take stock of the neighbouring districts of Murshidabad and then Malda. On Sunday, he is slated to go to Purbo Medinipur, from where he will monitor Paschim Medinipur, and the two remaining districts of North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas.

West Bengal kharif paddy production expected to fall 16%

25 Aug, 2010, 06.11PM IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Paddy production in drought- affected West Bengal is likely to fall by over 16 per cent during the current kharif season to 87 lakh tonnes.

The state produced 104 lakh tonnes of paddy in the last season. The state government has already announced drought in 11 districts (out of 19), including Burdwan, called as the rice bowl of the state, due to scanty rains in the ongoing monsoon season. "The production of paddy in the state is likely to be 17 lakh tonnes less than the last kharif season," West Bengal's agriculture minister Naren Dey told PTI over phone.

Dey said that sowing is also expected to come down to around 30 lakh hectares from 41.5 lakh hectares in the last kharif season. "Before the beginning of the current kharif season, we had targeted paddy sowing on 43.79 lakh hectares as against 41.5 lakh hectares of area in the last season. However, owing to scanty rains, paddy can be sown on around 30 lakh hectares only," Dey said.

West Bengal's rice produce has been estimated at around 149 lakh tonnes for 2009-10 crop season, ending June. The paddy-rice conversion rate is 67 per cent.

The truant monsoon has not only affected West Bengal, it has impacted rice sowing in other eastern states like Bihar and Jharkhand. The Bihar government has already announced all 38 districts as drought-affected while Jharkhand has declared drought in 12 districts out of 24.

The dip in output in West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, however, would not have much impact on the country's overall paddy production in the ongoing kharif season as sowing area has increased in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh among other northern states. As per the latest data available, area under paddy has increased by seven per cent as on August 20 in the ongoing 2010-11 kharif sowing season to 29.75 million hectares on the back of a good monsoon. The higher area under paddy augurs well for the country, as rice output had declined by 10 million tonnes in the 2009- 10 crop year (July-June) due to the severe drought in 2009.