New Delhi
Amid rising farm distress and anger an outcome of which the BJP learned the hard way in Kairana recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday told a delegation of visiting sugarcane farmers that the Cabinet would approve the implementation of minimum support price at 150 per cent of the input cost (on notified crops of kharif season 2018-19) during its meeting next week.

The Centre would also announce an “higher fair and remunerative price for sugarcane for 2018-19” in the next two weeks, he told a group of over 140 sugarcane farmers from UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Maharashtra and Karnataka invited over for an interaction at his residence.

“This would ensure a significant boost to the income of farmers,” said an official statement quoting him.

The FRP for this season would also be higher than the 2017-18 price and provide incentive for farmers whose recovery from sugarcane is higher than 9.5 per cent, the PM said.

He apprised the farmers of various decisions taken to liquidate arrears of cane farmers. “In the past seven to 10 days, more than Rs 4,000 crore of arrears had been given to farmers as a result of new policy measures enforced, he said, while assuring that states too had been asked to take effective measures for liquidation of cane arrears,” he said.

According to the official statement, “farmers thanked the PM and appreciated the various steps taken by his government in recent past”.

However, talking to The Tribune, some farmers’ representatives said the “election-driven exercise was not sufficient to undo the harm caused due to the government’s wrong policy decisions in past four years”.

“The four years of the BJP government disappointed farmers as economic policies pursued resulted either in depletion or stagnant in income,” said agriculture expert Sudhir Panwar. “The newfound interest in farmers in the last year of the present government is driven more by Lok Sabha elections than intention of farmers’ welfare. Sugarcane arrears worth Rs 22,000 crore is the outcome of the Centre’s policy failure as sugar and ethanol market are both regulated by it,” he said. Panwar also termed as “eyewash” the “much-advertised MSP at 150% of input cost”.