Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Ryots need power, not IT: YSR

By Our Staff Reporter

SRIKAKULAM June 13. Assailing the Chandrababu Naidu Government's "hi-tech'' methods to help farmers overcome the problems faced in agriculture, the CLP Leader, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, demanded that the most basic need of providing farm power connections be fulfilled first. Agricultre power connections were not given in normal course but only under the Tatkal scheme where Rs. 1.20 was charged for unit, Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy told a press conference at Palasa during his padayatra on Friday.

While making it clear that the Congress was not against technology, he said the plans to set up computers and the Internet to know commodity prices and derive benefit from them did not address the basic needs of farmers. Agriculture extension work suffered badly in the State as 800 posts of agriculture officers remained vacant and the assistant agriculture officers' posts were also not filled. As a result productivity fell drastically, the CLP leader said. Apart from providing irrigation facility, farmers should be informed about crop rotation, when the yield would be higher, use of pesticides and fertilizers properly to increase productivity. The neighbouring Tamil Nadu's paddy production was less than that of AP eight years ago. But now the production had increased by 15 per cent. Special attention should be paid by appointing field-level officers.

"Instead of going to the brass tacks, Mr Chandrababu Naidu talks about KU band, the Internet and TV relay vans,'' he commented. A suggestion in the Assembly to appoint a committee to specify measures for increasing productivity went unheeded, he said. He charged the Government with being indifferent even as the intensity of drought had been increasing during the past three years and every three of the four farmers committing suicide were from the State. The Government also did not concede the demand to form a committee to study the reasons for farmers' suicides.

To a question on the Government leaving the choice of going in for Bt Cotton to farmers, he said it was the responsibility of the Government to decide whether it was good or bad.

On backwardness of Srikakulam district, he said it had vast potential for development including the longest coastline in the State and untapped groundwater but development was sluggish and large-scale migration of labourers was taking place, he said.

Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy later released a special issue of Kadalika, brought out by Imam, a journalist of Anantapur, on the inter-linking of rivers.

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