Govt apathy caused loss to farmers: Nakka

PNS|Bapatla

Stating that the paddy farmers are the worst affected by the Mandous cyclonic storm, former minister and TDP senior leader Nakka Ananda Babu demanded that the government take steps to purchase soaked and discoloured paddy produce through the Rythu Bharosa Kendras.

The former minister visited some of the rain-affected fields at Pedapudi and Panchalavaram villages in Tsundur and Amurtaluru mandal on Tuesday and saw the damaged paddy crop. He interacted with the farmers, knew their agony and assured them of extending help.

Later, talking to the media, Nakka Ananda Babu alleged that the indifference of the government forced the farmers to incur losses. The farming sector is being neglected by the government resulting in the farmers getting huge losses.

The ex-minister lamented that the farmers were draining out stagnated rainwater from their fields to save their harvested crop to some extent and so is the situation elsewhere in the rain-affected mandals. Some farmers who raised maize as a second crop were also affected as the maize crop fields were inundated by rainwater.

“The government has set a condition that the farmers are eligible to get input subsidy if the crop loss is more than 33 %. The farmers have borrowed huge money from private moneylenders to raise their crops. The farmers said that since there were no buyers they had sold their crop at Rs 1200 per quintal to the mediators. The farmers were left in the lurch as they are going pillar to post to sell their paddy produce and save their produce from being drenched in rain,” he lamented. The cyclonic storm pushed the paddy farmers into a debt trap as they are now unable to repay their debts, he said.

Nakka Ananda Babu said that the farmers in the Bapatla district had begun harvesting paddy in a hurry to save crops from the rain and now they were struggling not only to sell the produce but also to save it from being soaked in rain.

He said that paddy in 48,000 acres got affected in the district as per the preliminary assessment, adding that the government is to incur a Rs 10,000 loss per acre due to the dwindling quality of paddy produce. Nakka Ananda Babu demanded that the government take steps to purchase the discoloured and soaked paddy.