Date:25/11/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/11/25/stories/2004112515390500.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Political will needed to resolve farm crisis: Jayati Ghosh

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, NOV. 24. The chairperson of Andhra Pradesh Commission on farmer's welfare, Jayati Ghosh, has said that Government could go a long way in solving the agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh if it displayed the requisite political will.

Delivering a lecture on "Overcoming agricultural crisis" organised by the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram trust here on Wednesday, Prof. Ghosh, said that unless public institutions were revived and the farm sector given its due the crisis confronting farmers would not end.

Compulsory credit to farmers, Government support for farm input supply, creation of marketing opportunities would automatically bring back agriculture on the right track, she added. Andhra Pradesh was going through an agrarian crisis unparalleled in recent times with rising number of farmer suicides. Wrong priorities had plunged the farm sector into crisis.

Lopsided policies

Blaming the lopsided policies of the Union and State Governments in the last one decade as the main cause of the unprecedented crisis, Mrs. Ghosh, said Andhra Pradesh literally became a laboratory for neo-liberal experiment. Both Governments had undermined the farm sector and destroyed public institutions.

Prof. Ghosh said decline in public investment in the rural areas and trade liberalisation dealt a body blow to the fortunes of farmers.

The Government had denied resources for the farm sector and created situation where the private seed input suppliers to dominate the market, she pointed out.

She felt that social and political pressure would force the Government to act.

The CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, Koratala Satyanarayana, presided.