PM may look to score over NCP with Vidarbha relief

MUMBAI: The Prime Minister is likely to announce a relief package for four states which have reported more than 10,000 farmers’ suicides since ‘01, during his visit to Vidarbha on June 30 and July 1, highly-placed sources said.

Dr Manmohan Singh is scheduled to meet the families of the farmers who have taken the extreme step in the districts of Yavatmal and Wardha in Vidarbha. The Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is likely to accompany him.

The Centre had in April prepared a tentative draft of a special relief package for Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Kerala, that have reported thousands of suicides since ‘01. The PM’s visit, offers an opportunity to the UPA government, particularly the Congress, to derive political mileage from the situation, sources said.

The Prime Minister had lambasted the Democratic Front(DF) government for its failure to stop the suicides at the inauguration of Mumbai metro’s phase I in Mumbai last week. Political observers interpret this as a snub to NCP head-honcho Sharad Pawar who holds the agriculture portfolio at the Centre.

With the Congress-NCP ties already under strain due to recent developments like industrialist Rahul Bajaj’s election to the Rajya Sabha for which the NCP joined hands with the saffron parties, a sulking Congress could exploit the Prime Minister’s visit to Vidarbha to score brownie points over the NCP, the sources said.

Vidarbha has reported 580 suicides since June ‘05. In December ‘05, the DF government announced a Rs 1,075 crore relief package covering the six worst-affected districts of the region. But it has not been of much help while the number of suicides has doubled since December.

Maharashtra deputy chief minister RR Patil admitted in Nagpur on Friday that the package had failed. Five farmers took their own lives in Yavatmal and Wardha on June 23, the day Maharashtra Governor SM Krishna was visiting families of farmers who had killed themselves.

Mantralaya mandarins have already got into a whitewashing act. “Just as they did with the Governor, the Prime Minister will be taken to meet families that have received government compensation. Orders have been issued from the Mantralaya to spend as much of the money earmarked for the relief package before the Prime Minister comes calling,” a senior Congress leader from Vidarbha said.

But politicians in Vidarbha aren’t amused. These include chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s bete noire and former MPCC chief Ranjeet Deshmukh. “Relief efforts are not being implemented properly. The government has not gone to the root cause of the suicides, which is the lack of proper agriculture credit system, failure of the cotton monopoly purchase scheme and almost zero irrigation,” Mr Deshmukh told ET.

The Congress big-shot was even more blunt about the Prime Minister’s visit. “The visit is too little, too late. The government seems to have waited for enough number of suicides,” he said. Maharashtra BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, also from Vidarbha, said he did not expect the PM to work wonders.

“Leave alone a special package, I don’t expect the Prime Minister even to announce a relief package on the lines of the one given to Andhra Pradesh, where the government has allocated more than Rs 300 crore. This government does not have political will to solve the crisis,” he said.