In its Vijayabheri meeting at Tukkuguda in September, the Congress announced Rs 15,000 annually for both landowning and tenant farmers. It also promised Rs 12,000 annually for agricultural labourers and a Rs 500 bonus for paddy crops. On the other hand, though the Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s manifesto promises an increase in the amount in the Rythu Bandhu scheme from Rs 10,000 to Rs 16,000 per year in a phased manner, it does not mention tenant farmers.
The 2011 Land Licensed Cultivators Act requires the government to identify and register actual cultivators and provide them benefits from support schemes. However, the Telangana government stopped following the Act after 2015. Tenant farmers are recognised by states like Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
According to a report by Rythu Swarajya Vedika, a door-to-door survey that covered 7,744 farmers in 34 villages of Telangana, 36 per cent of them are tenant farmers. The projected total number of tenant farmers in Telangana is 22 lakh.
Speaking to News18, B Kondal Reddy from the organisation said: “The cash support from the Rythu Bandhu scheme goes only to the land title holder directly. While the government claims that the scheme would indirectly benefit tenant farmers, only 10 tenants (0.4 per cent) said that the land owner gave the entire Rythu Bandhu money to them. Only 0.1 per cent of tenant farmers said they were given a portion of Rythu Bandhu.”
Also, another initiative by the BRS government, the Dharani portal, built with an aim to digitise land records, is linked to the Rythu Bandhu scheme. This portal too recognises only landowning farmers. Such a steady stream of income from the government might make the landowners less likely to pass on the benefits to the tenant farmers.
The state’s BRS government has maintained that since the tenant farmers move from one land to another, it is difficult to maintain their records. A party leader also expressed scepticism about how the Congress is going to fulfill such “tall promises”. “If we give benefits to both categories of farmers, it means that they will get money for cultivating the same piece of land,” he said. “Such a promise is going to put an unimaginable economic burden on the state.”
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