Narendra Modi has played a cheap joke on Madhya Pradesh farmers
"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt" - Sun Tzu famously propagated in his classic The Art of War.
The poor farmers of Madhya Pradesh may not have read Tzu for sure, but they have some idea about impenetrable dark night plans that can have a thunderbolt impact. It's just about timing and they are waiting for their time to come. The government should fear the silence of the poor.
Farmers in Badwani, Bhind, Gwalior, Agar, Ujjain and almost all other parts of Madhya Pradesh have chosen to remain silent on the compensation that is being awarded to them for crop loss under the Rashtriya Fasal Bima Yojna.
The insurance scheme has now been renamed as Prime Minister's Crop Insurance plan, popularly known as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna.
In a grand function, attended by lakhs of farmers from across the state on which crores of rupees were spent on February 18, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the operational guidelines of the scheme.
He called it a solution to the problems farmers face, in which the anna dataa - a term liberally used by politicians for famers when they set out to seek their vote - is required to give 2 per cent premium for the kharif crop and 1.5 per cent for the rabi crop.
The PM in the same event also announced there would be no upper limit for government subsidy for this scheme and that there would be a three-fold increase in farmer compensation.
The compensation that has been distributed in December 2016 is for the crop loss the farmers suffered in 2015, while the name of the insurance plan was changed in February 2016.
And now the reality check.
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| More money has been spent on printing cheques and distributing them than the actual amount given to farmers. (Photo: PTI) |
Badri Dudhani of Badwani suffered 80 per cent loss in his 12-acre banana farm and he has been given 79 paise compensation.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanakar Dayal of Bagulari village under the Ater Vidhan Sabha constituency in Bhind district has got Rs 18.28 paise as compensation for the crop loss that he suffered on his 12 bigha of land.
Ram Sinha Katare of Bhind owns 10 bighas of land; he suffered nearly 80 per cent crop loss and has been compensated with Rs 25.
Fifty-year-old Chander Singh of Palda village in Agar district owns five bighas of land and suffered nearly 100 per cent crop loss - he has been given Rs 8 as compensation.
Forty-year-old Ram Kunwar Bai, a widow, of Palda village in Agar district has six bighas of land in her name and got Rs 12 as insurance money for the nearly 100 per cent crop loss she suffered.
In Agar, there is one village that has 75 farmers who have got insurance money and the maximum that a farmer got is Rs 250.
These are just samples. The story is the same across the state - more money has been spent on printing cheques and distributing them than the actual amount given to farmers.
Revenue minister Uma Shankar Gupta has put the entire blame on the insurance company. But it was not the insurance company that so grandly unveiled the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna in Sehore in February. The Prime Minister did.
The farmers may be ignoring this fact but they certainly won't forget. The rulers should fear their silence. They can strike the thunderbolt on polling day.