CMs’ meet talks drought,PM says don’t panic

Addressing the special session devoted to drought,Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar outlined broad contours of their plans. “There is a need to take up area-specific,agro-climatic-based schemes and programmes to assess crop losses in the remaining part of the kharif season and to try to compensate for loss of production during the coming rabi season,” Pawar said. He admitted that the drought is “likely to affect production and productivity of the sown crop adversely”.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was learnt to have urged states to use the crisis as an opportunity to consolidate the country’s capacity to tackle drought-like situation by strengthening the PDS system and taking up extensive drought-proofing work under the NREGS,among other things.

Most of the states used the opportunity to seek Central aid. Haryana and Uttar Pradesh,among others,demanded that the Centre bear the cost of additional power purchases for agricultural operations. Many other states demanded that the Centre bear the higher proportion of diesel subsidy to drought-hit farmers. The Centre has agreed to bear half the cost of the diesel subsidy.

While Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot acknowledged the availability of funds under different schemes of the Centre and underscored the need for effective utilisation,his Gujarat counterpart,Narendra Modi,shared his state’s experience of using the NREGS to restore water bodies. The Finance Minister,reportedly,commended the Gujarat model.

Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana,both of which have managed to cover normal sowing area despite deficient rainfall,are learnt to have demanded that the Centre hike the MSP for paddy substantially to incentivise farmers. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar asked the Centre to revive an old ‘million tubewells’ scheme to tap irrigation potential in eastern India.

In this context,Pawar told the Chief Ministers that states should use the funds available under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund with NABARD to dig shallow tubewells in potential areas as a short-term measure. He also urged chief ministers to personally monitor rescheduling of crop loans to farmers. The PM had assured rescheduling of farm loans in the wake of the drought in his I-Day speech.

Earlier in the day,Pawar met representatives of the private sugar industry to make extra sugar available to state governments for PDS to check price rise.