In Ambedkar’s India, Govt’s Priority Is To Ensure Uplift Of Socio-economically Backward People, Says PM Modi

In Ambedkar’s India belonging to the socio-economically backward people, each and every expense incurred by a farmer will be considered while fixing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at 1.5 times the input cost, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in “Mann Ki Baat” program. Ambedkar showed that it was not necessary for a person to be born in a rich family in order to succeed, but even those born in poor families can dare to dream and realise those dreams.”Many people mocked Baba Saheeb Ambedkar, tried to pull him back and made every possible effort to ensure that the son of an impoverished and backward family would not progress in life, be something and succeed in life,” Modi said.”But, the picture of New India is altogether different. It is an India which is Ambedkar’s India, of the poor and the backward.”Modi said Ambedkar was an “inspiration for millions of people like me, who belong to backward classes”. He said to honour the architect of India’s constitution, the government would begin the ‘Gram-Swaraj Abhiyan’ on his birth anniversary on April 14 till May 5.Separate programmes on village development, poverty amelioration and social justice will be held throughout India, he said. In 1940s, when the whole world was focused on the Second World War, the looming Cold War and the partition of the sub-continent, Ambedkar laid the foundation of “Team India’s spirit” as he talked about federalism, and on Centre and States working together for the uplift of the country. “Today, we have adopted in all aspects of governance the mantra of co-operative federalism and going a step further, we have adopted competitive cooperative federalism,” he added. Referring to the farming community, he said that in the Union Budget for the 2018-19 Financial Year commencing on April 1, it has been decided that for fixing Minimum Support Price (MSP) each and every expense incurred by a farmer will be considered. .MSP will be 1.5 times the input cost. The Government is committed to ensure adequate returns to farmers when the government decided to give at least one-and-a-half times the input costs as MSP for the scheduled crops. For calculating the MSP, the input cost to be considered will include the labour cost, expenditure on machines and animals-also including machine and animals on hire-cost of seeds, fertilizers, irrigation, land revenue, interest on working capital, rent of leased land and even the labour cost of the farmer and his family. “Further to ensure adequate income to farmers, agriculture marketing reforms are being initiated in a big way. Efforts are being made to link village markets to wholesale market and global market.” In order to ensure that farmers do not have to go far to sell their produce, 22,000 village haats are being upgraded to agricultural produce market committees (APMCs) and being integrated with e-NAM (National Agriculture Market) platform. The objective for creating such a mechanism is to help the agriculturists remain connected with all the markets across the country, Modi added.