As long as I am here, free farm power will continue: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh

Amarinder had constituted the Group of Experts himself in April to bring the state’s economy back on track. The group had recently submitted its preliminary report to the government.

Free farm power is considered a major drain on state’s resources and power subsidy bill has crossed Rs 10,000 crore this fiscal. The GoE’s report had called the subsidy “regressive” as it benefitted big farmers. Farmers being the major vote bank in Punjab, no political party has been able to rationalise it. Several suggestions have been made that it should be given to only the small farmers but vote-bank politics does not allow any government of the day to take action.

Chief Minister’s declaration about rejection of Montek committee report on farm power subsidy came at a presentation by the GoE to Amarinder on Friday.

A government statement quoted Montek Ahluwalia that he himself clarified during a virtual interaction with the Chief Minister that the “report of the expert group was not anti-farmer”.

“Media reports suggesting so were misleading,” he was quoted as saying, adding that what the group had suggested was diversification as the only hope for Punjab agriculture.

Montek said that since the state government had categorically announced that it had no plans to change its free power for farmers policy, the expert group had recommended that farmers must be incentivised to diversify out of rice, since the water intensive crop was economically profitable for farmers even though the ecological damage was massive. Diversification implies a reduction in area under rice and modernisation of marketing, which in turn implies a much larger role for the private sector, he said.

The statement quoted Amarinder saying diversification had already been started in Punjab during his first term as CM. He pointed out that the state had significantly increased cotton area this year by reducing paddy, but the problem of price support remains a big obstacle to diversification. The farmers need MSP for alternate crops to incentivise them away from paddy, he added.

Punjab was a power-surplus state, which was why his government had also fixed industrial power rate at Rs 5 per unit, in order to incentivise industry to invest in the state, the Chief Minister said. He underlined the need for promoting industry with the potential to generate more employment.

Underscoring the need for long-term planning to restore Punjab to its position of pre-eminence, Montek said while the state had done better than others in handling the Covid crisis, it would need to increase allocation for health, like the rest of the country. Similar pandemics could not be ruled out in the future, he warned, adding that in the medium term, public health expenditure needs to be pushed up to 20 per cent of the total for the next five years.

Suggesting radical policy changes to reverse the declining trend in economy, Montek said these would need to be anchored directly by the Chief Minister’s office, in association with industry representatives, to avoid any bureaucratic resistance to change. Noting that Punjab needed more improvement in ease of doing business index, he said mid-2021 should be kept as target by the state to complete the necessary changes for triggering the wave of industrialisation.

Of the 128 recommendations listed by the group, even if 100 are met, Punjab would make major strides in industrial growth, he added. “Our objective should be to have made enough changes in the existing rules and regulations over the next six months that industry on the ground feels that things have changed significantly,” Montek said.

Be ready to pay heavy price if you withdraw free power: SAD to CM

Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday warned Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh against “the withdrawal of the free power facility to the farmers introduced in 1997 by the Parkash Singh Badal-led SAD-BJP government”.

“If you take a single step towards discontinuing free power to farmers, you must prepare yourself and your government to face an unprecedented mass movement by the SAD to safeguard the interests of the already beleaguered peasantry. We will never allow free power to be stopped,” the SAD president said, while reacting to reports about the recommendations of a committee set up by the Punjab government and headed by former deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia to suggest ways to revive the Punjab economy in the wake of the lockdown following the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a written statement, Sukhbir said that “the SAD rejects this report as inimical to farmers and accepting its recommendations would amount to signing the death warrant of poor farmers”.

He also asked the CM to realise the gravity of the issue and reject today itself the recommendations of the Congress’s blue-eyed economist, Montek Singh Ahluwalia who has described the free power facility as “regressive” and advised the govt to stop it.

Sukhbir also lashed out at the other recommendation of Ahluwallia-led group of experts in which the group had advised the state government to “slow down the procurement of paddy in the state”. The SAD president said that “this recommendation of the Congress-loyalist economist sets the cat out of the bag. This is the clinching proof of who really wants to stop assured procurement of farmers’ produce by the government”.

Sukhbir said, “Free power to farmers has been the most progressive contribution of Parkash Singh Badal to farmers and to the national economy as it has completely secured our food kitty and saved billions of dollars in foreign exchange alone through self-reliance and export in foodgrains. It is strange that some arm-chair economists, sitting in air-conditioned rooms in the metropolitan cities pretend to understand farm economics better than the generations of farmers who have spent their lives toiling in midsummer heat in the farms.”

Sukhbir said that Captain Amarinder Singh had always been looking for excuses to stop free power to farmers. He had actually withdrawn this facility during his previous tenure as CM during 2002-07 before the SAD forced him through a mass movement to resume it. He has now created a new fig leaf in the form of the recommendations of Ahluwalia to cover his true dislike of this life-saving relief given to the farmers by the Badal government. Farmers are already on the brink of a disaster with the ever-increasing costs of farm inputs and the failure of the prices of their produce to keep pace with the rising costs.