Kiran govt renames YSR scheme, launches it

Even as the state government has claimed that all the schemes implemented by it had originally been designed by the Congress and were not the ideas of the late chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the state government re-launched a YSR scheme, Samachara Sravanti, as Praja Hitam. Praja Hitam is intended to throw some light on the welfare and developmental activities of the government to the people. As part of it, every Thursday the head of one department, along with the minister concerned, will give a briefing on the activities of his or her department.

Information and public relations minister DK Aruna, along with agriculture minister Kanna Lakshminarayana, formally launched the weekly-special press briefings on Thursday starting with the agriculture department. While explaining the department’s activities, Lakshminarayana claimed that the government was keeping the promises made by the Congress in 2004.

But the Kiran Kumar Reddy government renamed the YSR scheme and re-launched it in order to boost the government’s sagging image.

When asked why the government failed to keep its 2009 election promise of providing nine-hour power supply for agriculture, Kanna repeated what he had said in the past that the government would keep its promise but added in the same breath that the power position was not good and reservoir levels were not encouraging.

Though, Kanna said the state set itself an ambitious target of 218 lakh tonne of food grain production during 2012-13, he did not spell out how the state was prepared to meet the adverse seasonal conditions delays the sowing season. According to agriculture department statistics, sowing has been completed only in 12.09 lakh acres till now against a normal area of 80.29 lakh acres.

The inflows into the major reservoirs are nil and there are no outflows either to the Nagarjunasagar dam and the Krishna delta. Yet, the minister tried to present some success stories that farmers who saved Rs 1,600 per acre by using modern implements. He stressed the need for SRI (System of Rice Intensification) paddy cultivation and said that it would be linked to the NREGS scheme for which the government sanctioned Rs 200 crore.

Asked why the government failed to expand the SRI paddy cultivation beyond 1.27 lakh hectares despite ten years of publicity, he did not give a satisfactory reply. He said that their target was 5 lakh acres this year and 40 lakh acres in future.

Dismissing reports that there was shortage of seeds, Kanna said the problem was due to Mahyco company which failed to increase the production matching with its publicity among Telangana farmers. “Every season Mahyco promises to the government that it will increase its production but fails to do so,” he  said and added that 50 varieties of Bt cotton seeds were available in the market and the Mahyco’s yield was not the highest.

The minister said that they would focus on farm mechanisation this year at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore. When pointed out that farm mechanisation was helping only big farmers, he said, “Journalists told me that marginal farmers are not getting subsidy under farm mechanisation. We will examine it.”