Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the Union government of trying to bring down the income of farmers across the country to the level of Bihar, a State where, according to a survey, an agricultural household has the least annual income.
Mr. Gandhi, on his Twitter handle, tagged a media report that claimed that an agricultural household in Punjab earned the highest in a year while Bihar earned the least.
Quotes Subramania Bharathi
In a separate tweet, he quoted Subramania Bharathiar’s praise of farmers and asserted that withdrawing the three anti-farmers’ laws would be a fitting tribute to the great Tamil poet on his 139th birth anniversary.
“The farmer wants his income to be as much as that of farmers of Punjab. The Modi government wants the income of all farmers of the country to be as much as that of Bihar farmers,” Mr. Gandhi said in the Hindi tweet.
The survey cited by the Congress leader showed that an average Indian agricultural household earns ₹77,124 in a year; Punjab farmers earned the highest of ₹ 2,16,708 while those in Bihar earned only ₹ 42,684.
Bihar was a State that had abolished the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act way back in 2006 and the Congress has been arguing that abolishing the APMCs and removing guarantees of minimum support price (MSP) will make farmers more vulnerable.
Survey of 2013
However, the data cited by Mr. Gandhi is from the Situation Survey of Agricultural Household that was undertaken between January to December, 2013.
“Let’s salute farmers. Let’s not rest on laurels,”quoting these lines of Bharathi, Mr. Gandhi said, “Let’s pay tribute to the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharathiar on his 139th birth anniversary today by withdrawing the anti-farmer laws”.
