The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : `Velugu' fails to brighten lives

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 09, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

`Velugu' fails to brighten lives

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI. Oct. 8. The implementation of `Velugu' scheme designed to ensure social security to the `poorest of the poor' in the State has left much to be desired in the drought-hit Chittoor district. Infact, the scheme must be best suited and timely for the district given the fact that it accounted for nearly fifty suicides in the last five months alone by impoverished farmers in the wake of recurrent drought for over seven years.

Water, power scarce

The groundwater table in the rain-shadow district had touched rock-bottom, which eventually saw even the deep bore wells sunk by the farmers failing and the crops withering. Farmers who constituted nearly 70 per cent of the population of the water-starved district have to invariably depend only on lift irrigation in the absence of any major rivers nor projects and this explains the reason for the district having the highest number of pump sets in the State making it eventually that much dependent on electricity and its vagaries. Though free power was announced to agriculture it got mired in controversies and procedural problems as in any other district.

Reports are pouring in about the transformers/electric motors of the farmers getting burnt due to low-voltage caused by over drawal of `free power' by both authorised and unauthorised consumers. The plight of the farmers as such in the chronically drought-prone Chittoor district is agonising and it is in this context that the need and usefulness of a well-meaning programme like Velugu is being increasingly felt to pull its worst-hit farming and rural community from their present morass.

Farmers unhappy

But the Velugu programme though has a wide network and funds earmarked for it is said to be beset with its own procedural and inherent problems. According to reports the programme is not able to benefit the affected farmers of the district much because of the stipulation that the beneficiary must belong to the `poorest of the poor' category which obviously excluded bulk of the farming community from its purview though most of them are either below the poverty line bracket or were subsequently pushed into it. Farmers are unhappy that though Velugu scheme looks tailor-made for their survival and social security, because of the reported stipulation it is not able to help them much and provide the intended social security. They are arguing that the authorities must take a practical and humanitarian look at their plight than harping on conditionalities.

Compensation issue

Reports also indicated that barring a few, not many families of suicide victims have received the benefits package despite the initial euphoria and the routine rhetoric by the officials and politicians when they called on the families.

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