The Centre is gearing up to unveil a special package for Vidarbha in Maharashtra on the lines of Bundelkhand in a bid to improve the condition of cotton farmers in the region, which has seen unabated suicides by debt-trapped people in recent years. The move is being seen as an attempt by the Congress-led UPA government to position strongly for Lok Sabha elections two years later in 2014.
The special package for Vidarbha, sources said, is in the final stage, with two members of the Planning Commission, including Dr Soumitra Choudhary, having already undertaken a field trip to the region. The UPA had unveiled the Bundelkhand special package two years before the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
The ministry of agriculture, which is working on the special package for Vidarbha, has already studied the proposal of the Maharashtra government. While the nitty-gritty of the package is being finetuned by the ministry of agriculture in consultation with the Planning Commission, it would focus mostly on irrigation at the micro-level along with water conservation.
“The cotton growers and sugarcane farming have been hit hard in the recent years due to poor irrigation. Therefore, the idea is to address the problem for a sustainable solution to the region,” said a senior official.
The Vidarbha region, which had been the bastion of the Congress and NCP, has seen a number of cooperative sugar mills closing down over the years, with a few of them recently bought by BJP chief Nitin Gadkari in a bid to position the saffron party strongly in the region.
Vidarbha is also home to Kalawati, who became famous after Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi paid a visit to her a couple of years ago, but a number of efforts to stem farmer suicides do not appear to have yielded the desired results.
“The special package for Bundelkhand has shown positive results and after some years some concrete outcome would be seen. Another special package for Kuttanadu in Kerala where sub-sea level farming is undertaken has also shown promising results. Therefore, the government is working out a special package for Vidarbha too, which faces acute problems due to poor irrigation, resulting in an undesirable situation where farmers are getting trapped in debts,” added the official.