Officials taking farmers for a ride?
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, January 14 2014 : Whereas Government of India has been investing huge amount of money in agriculture and allied sectors, certain quarters have raised strong suspicion that farmers of the State are being duped on account of lack transparency and insecerity on the part of officials of depart-ment concerned.

Taking due cognizance of the importance of agriculture for the growth of economy, the Government of India has been investing heavily in agriculture and allied sectors.

Accordingly, the State's Agriculture Department and allied sectors have been receiving huge amount of funds from the Central Government on a regular basis.

With these funds, several schemes are being implemented through Agriculture, Horticulture, Veterinary and Animal Husbandry, Fishery and Forest Departments.

These schemes are implemented with money sanc- tioned by the Government of India after they were approved by the State Level San- ctioning Committee headed by the Chief Secretary as the chairman.

File photo of women cultivators working in a paddy field

Agriculture Department is the nodal agency for all departments incorporated within Agriculture and its allied sectors.

Talking with The Sangai Express, some high ranking officers of Agriculture Department said that farmers have no thorough knowledge about the numerious schemes, their provisions and accompanied benefits.

Farmers show little enthusiasm to learn about these schemes and there are many officials who have little sincerity and transparency.

Talking about agriculture sector, they said that only inputs were given to farmers earlier but nowadays special attention is given to the same sector and farmers are given details of even fertilizer components.

In many cases, during selection of farmers for specific programmes farmers who were genuinely interested are ignored.

As such, there is a need to streamline the process of selecting interested farmers.

Moreover, many of the officials are more concerned with area coverage than selection of farmers who are ge- nuinely interested.

Material components of different schemes including those entitled to farmers of remote areas are collected by officials from Lamphel.

With many farmers unaware of the schemes and be- nefits entitled to them under these schemes, there is no guarantee that some officers do not finish off all the materials at Imphal itself.

Lack of knowledge on the part of farmers regarding the schemes only encourage district level officers to deceive farmers.

Ignorant as they are, farmers are happy with what they get even if it is much lesser than what they are entitled to.

They don't give a second thought even when they are told to append their signatures on blank papers.

This gives ample room to officers for manipulation and swindling.

Whether it is farmers' de-monstration programme or something else, farmers should be informed about the inputs available from the programme.

The Centre has been generously investing money bas- ed on programmes proposed by the State.

But the huge amount of fund invested so far has yielded very little positive results.

As such, there is an urgent need to streamline all the schemes being implemented in agriculture and allied sectors, the officials suggested.