By IANS
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Thursday clarified that farmers would not be compelled to go for contract farming under the new agriculture infrastructure and investment policy announced by her last Sunday.
Reacting to criticism from the opposition against the policy, which for the first time opened doors for private participation in agriculture in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati told a press conference here, “those who were trying to make an issue out of a non-issue were clearly advocating the cause of the middlemen, who have so far been exploiting the poor and marginal farmers.”
She said: “Our objective behind introduction of a new system was absolutely transparent and clear, that is, to ensure remunerative price of his produce to the farmer, who under the prevailing system, was at the mercy of the middlemen.”
Mayawati emphatically denied that the intent behind the policy was to give a boost to the retail giants who were in the process of getting a foothold in the state.
“And in any case, the new arrangement was absolutely optional as the existing practice of routing agriculture marketing through the traditional ‘mandis’ would continue as a parallel system.
“We do not wish to impose the new system on any farmer and yet if the entire farming community chooses to denounce it, we will withdraw it,” she said.
Replying to questions, cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said, “what we were trying to do was just an additional facility for the farmer, purely with the intent of giving him an opportunity for economic growth.”
He ruled out the possibility of the new policy adversely affecting the interest of the farmers, as had been the case with cotton growers in some other states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra. “We are not following any other existing model of contract farming; we have evolved our own system which has no room for compromising the interest of the farmer,” he emphasised.
“Keeping the interests of the farmers in mind, we had devised a machinery at the district and the state level to arbitrate over any breach of agreement between the farmer and trader,” he added.