Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 28: Who Will Save Farmers When Fence Eats Crops?
Today’s Praja Sankalpa Yatra wound its way through Tadapatri and Singanamala assembly constituencies. Hundreds of women from the most deprived strata of society, came rushing out to greet me in Chittoor. With hope in their hearts and tears welled up in their eyes as they blessed. Their admiration and love for my late father cannot be measured. YSR's pro-poor initiatives during the five golden years had transformed their lives. I can see the same love and affection in their eyes for me. They see me as YSR’s son, truly worthy of their blessings. Their faith has only increased my responsibility towards the people.
River Penna bisects Chittoor and Tarimela. There is no bridge on this river. The people of Tarimela insisted that I visit their village. So they laid a temporary road with earth and boulders so I could reach the historic village. I can never forget this thoughtful gesture. For decades, the people of Tarimela have been yearning for a bridge on Penna.
Historic Tarimela is the fountainhead of revolution. Tarimela Nagireddy, the great son of this soil, has immortalized this village in the annals of the history of revolutionary struggle. He had always rooted for credibility and values in politics. His life was dedicated to the cause of the poor. Even in the era of honest and credible politics, dominated by people who lived their principles, Nagireddy felt that legislative means were useless and resigned from the House on principle. He would have been greatly pained seeing the present day Assembly, dominated by a ruling party that swears by deceit, lives by duplicity and is utterly indifferent to people’s welfare.
I wonder as to what he would have done if he were to be in the House of today's AP. The last four years have seen one of the worst governments in Andhra Pradesh. Using the riches garnered through corrupt practices, the ruling party has been degrading democratic values through the horse-trading of MLAs. This House has become a haven for falsehoods and for those deluding the people. One cannot expect any justice from this House. Hence, I am here on my padayatra to be in the assembly of the people.
I inspected cotton fields along the way. The crop looked damaged. When I sought to know the reason for this dire situation, the farmers said that the seeds that were touted as high yielding BT cotton seeds, were in fact spurious seeds. The greedy and unscrupulous seed sellers had tricked them, a fact vouched by the officials of the agriculture department too.
At a time when the farm sector is in the throes of an unmitigated crisis with remunerative prices and input support denied to farmers, the chief minister and his
henchmen through their proxies are flooding the markets with spurious seeds and fertilisers. They are playing with the lives of the hapless farmers. Instead of helping them, the government is actually tightening the noose around the farmers. This TDP government w ill undoubedtly go down as an anti-farmer regime and one that badly cheated them. Who will come to the rescue of the hapless farmers when the fence eats the crop?
