Telangana dwarfs many States in reforms

​Hyderabad: The year 2018 stood noteworthy in K Chandrashekar Rao's first term as the Chief Minister of Telangana. Giving other progressive States a big shocker, the Telangana State government introduced its first scheme “Rythu Bandhu” to alleviate the plights of the distressed farmers. Under the scheme, farmers were given Rs 8,000 cash incentive per acre and also Rs 5 lakh insurance cover for every farmer family.

Though the farmers welfare scheme enveloped with mild criticism on extending the cash benefit to rich farmers possessing more than 10 acres land, KCR drew the  national attention by his unique Rythu Bandhu scheme which also turned out to be a big game changer in the just concluded assembly elections, in which the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) won with a huge landslide. 

The TRS government had to face many financial challenges to implement the scheme which required Rs 12,000 crore for a year alone. Government will have to borne Rs 2,500 crore additionally for the enforcement of insurance scheme. To ensure transparency and timely disbursement of the benefit, the TS government entrusted LIC as the official implementing agency.

Apart from the farmer welfare programmes, the Chief Minister also initiated measures to provide remunerative prices to the agriculture produce through active market intervention programme. Stringent act was enforced to punish the middlemen who purchased farm output from the farmers below the fixed prices by State government. Cotton, Chilli, Maize and Paddy farmers were the biggest beneficiaries of the special measures taken by the KCR government.