A four member team of Alok Singh, Janki Prasad Gaud, Shekhar and Vinod visited following villages in Fatehpur tehsil, district Barabanki: Sarsarwa, Kotvakla, Rasulpur Hetam and Cheda Velhara, to get a firsthand account of loss of crops due to recent untimely rains and hailstorm. Team also visited the family of farmer Late Akhilesh Verma (photos attached) who died on 26th march due to heart attack. Team accompanied by villagers investigated the crops and the findings were as follows:
1. Found that more than 60% of crops of wheat, potato, dal, oil seeds are damaged.
2. No survey has been done by any government agency yet. There has been no visit from insurance companies too. Farmers are worried as time has come for next crop. If farmers remove the damaged crop, then any future survey may exclude them from any compensation or insurance.
3. Government committees for helping (साधन सरकारी समितियां) farmers at village level to get easy access to urea and seeds are not operational at all. These committee centres also act as direct purchase centres to help farmers get valid price of their produce. Since these centres are not operational, and since farmers cannot afford to keep their produce in cold storage, they are being subjected to exploitation. They have to sell potato at a very low rate of Rs 300 per quintal to market forces.
Its a pity that there are so-called 200 farmer-MPs (Members of Parliament) presently. Even after around 550 questions being raised in the Parliament on farmer problems, the farmers are not getting adequate and timely compensation from the Government or Insurance from banks. They are being subjected to number of surveys without any results.
We have put forth the demand to the government to release a certain per cent of compensation immediately so that there are no more cases of suicide or distress-related deaths. We have also recommended to the government to not declare the farmers as defaulters on the loan taken on Kisan Credit Card, and also provide the credit for the next year.
For more information, please contact: Alok Singh +91-8756-222-696
