Budget anti-farmer, regressive, says Cong, JDS in Karnataka

Bengaluru: The Congress and the JD(S) in Karnataka on Saturday dubbed the union budget tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman regressive and anti-farmer.

Reacting to the budget, former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah claimed the Centre wants to privatise and corporatise the agriculture sector.

“Of the 16 points on agriculture, nine are related to corporate farming. Their intention is the privatisation of the agriculture sector.

They are going to benefit corporates and not the farmers,” Siddaramaiah said.

Speaking about the three central model laws on agriculture related to agricultural land leasing, marketing and contract farming, Siddaramaiah claimed such laws were not going to benefit the marginal farmers, who are in a majority with a land holding somewhere between one acre and five acres.

“If at all they want to benefit these small farmers then they should bring integrated farming but that is not visible in this budget,” Siddaramaiah pointed out.

Former chief minister and JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy called it the “most disappointing budget.”

Calling the budget “deadly”, Kumaraswamy likened the proposal of agricultural land leasing with the controversial citizenship amendment law.

“There is no information about how many promises have been fulfilled, which were made in the last five years by the BJP government,” Kumaraswamy said.

He added that the budgetary allocation for education has been curtailed from Rs 1.3 lakh crore in the previous year to Rs 99,000 crore.

Kumaraswamy also questioned the Kisan Udan scheme.

“The scheme says the government will coordinate with the civil aviation department but will they make the farmers fly in the aeroplane instead of road? This is not a futuristic budget,” he said.

The former chief minister was critical about no mention of measures for employment generation in the budget.

“The economy, which is on downturn, will decline further due to this budget,” he added.