KISANS AND KHET MAZDOORS

 

The Congress will pursue an Agriculture First strategy in resource allocation. Public investment in agriculture will be stepped up substantially with focus in the backward and poor regions. This will cover irrigation, electrification, godowns, marketing, research and extension.

The entire rural credit system based on cooperatives will be restored to health. The flow of agricultural credit would be doubled in the next three years and the coverage of small and marginal farmers by institutional lending will also expand substantially. Immediate steps will be taken to ease the burden of debt and high interest rates on farm loans.

A time-bound programme for restoring all public tubewells to good working condition wherever required will be started. The pace of construction of new irrigation wells in the poorer districts of the country will be accelerated.

A special technology and extension programme for dryland farming will be introduced. An intensive agricultural development programme for the 100-odd districts in the arid and semi-arid regions of the country will he put in place. Watershed development projects will be promoted on a large-scale and the wasteland development programme lying dormant these past few years will be revived.

The agro-processing industry and other agriculture-related activities like dairying, aquaculture, fisheries, horticulture, sericulture will be encouraged through fresh investment, technology and marketing resources. A renewed emphasis will be placed on wasteland development and afforestation.

While the terms of trade will always be maintained in favour of agriculture, simultaneously steps will be taken to ensure that profitability in agriculture is also increased.

Farmers all over the country will receive fair and remunerative prices and government agencies entrusted with the responsibility for procurement and marketing will pay special attention to farmers in poor and backward states and districts.

While farm insurance schemes for both crops and cattle will be implemented, the Congress will also examine the feasibility of an Agricultural Stabilisation Fund involving a system of direct support or income support to farmers particularly in the ecologically vulnerable regions of the country.

Controls on the free movement of farm commodities and processing of agricultural products and regulations that depress the incomes of farmers will be systematically removed. Farmers will be given greater say in the organizations that supply inputs to them.

The Congress will ensure the fullest implementation of minimum wage laws for farm labour. Comprehensive protective legislation will be enacted for all agricultural workers. It will redouble its efforts to distribute surplus productive land to the landless. It will also modernize the revenue administration at the local level and start a major national programme to record all titles to land and keep them up-to-date.

Like it did for panchayats, the Congress will bring forward a Constitutional amendment to ensure the democratic, autonomous and professional functioning of all cooperatives.