In its final months in power, the NDA government has left no stone unturned to woo the farmers ahead of the general election due by May this year. As expected, presenting the interim budget 2019, Union minister Piyush Goyal announced a slew of measures to appease the farmers, who have been largely disgruntled with the Centre as was evident in the recently concluded assembly elections to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Piyush Goyal on Friday announced structural income support to farmers. He proposed an income support of Rs 2,000 per hectare to farmers with up to 2 hectares land. Under the PM Kisan Yojana, farmers will get Rs 6,000 per year through direct bank transfer in three instalments. The scheme will be 100 per cent financed by the Union government. The scheme has a budget outlay of Rs 75,000 crore for FY19.
The limit for farm loan waiver has been doubled to 8 per cent. "For the welfare of farmers and for doubling their income, the historic decision was taken to increase MSP by 1.5 times the production cost for all 22 crops... All farmers hit by natural calamity to get interest subvention of 5 per cent," said Piyush Goyal.
A few steps were announced by Goyal in a move to divert farmers from crops to fisheries and animal husbandry. A Rashtriya Gokul Yojana for cow protection with an allocation of Rs 750 crore was announced in the interim budget 2019. In addition, the government will create a separate department for fisheries.
The direct cash transfer was one of the highly anticipated and talked about schemes in the interim budget 2019. The move is aimed at addressing rural distress, which was primarily blamed for BJP's defeat in recent assembly elections in key states.
What budget 2018 had in store for farmers
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In budget 2018, Arun Jaitley had proposed to raise the minimum support price for kharif season crops to 1.5 times of agri production cost—that is cost plus 50 per cent. Following the announcement, the Centre had hiked the MSP of 14 kharif crops in July.
In addition, the budget had set the total credit to agriculture target at Rs 11 lakh crore for the financial year 2018-19. It had also announced the strengthening of the e-national agricultural market network.
The government had also promised to spend Rs 14.34 lakh crore on rural infrastructure across various schemes and departments.
