With an eye on the panchayat polls, the CPI(M) is going all out to cash in on the wide-spread anger and anguish among the farmers over the denial of support price for paddy and some other issues. This became evident on Friday when the party’s politburo member and former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattach-arjee and state secretary Biman Bose painted Mamata Banerjee government as not farmer-friendly. “Paddy farmers are not getting buyers for their crop. In desperation, they are committing suicides. In seven months, 12 farmers have ended their lives. This never happened during Left Front regime. You will realise what kind of force you have voted to power,” Mr Bose warned, adding that pro-rich policies of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress were responsible for the farmers’ misery.
Mr Bhattacharjee said that there was a bumper crop of paddy but the state government had no mechanism to procure it. “Every year our government used to smoothly purchase paddy from the farmer but this government has proved totally ill-equipped,” he added.
“A minister even wrote to the state government asking it when the Centre had allotted (NREGA) funds then why it was not being utilised and why poor people were not given work,” he said.
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Pension age for widows to be lowered to 18
AGE CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, JAN. 6
Union minister of rural development Jairam Ramesh on Friday said that the age bar for widows, who are beneficiaries of the central pension scheme, will be lowered from the existing 40 to 18 years. The minister also said that the pension for widows, old-aged and handicapped would be increased from the existing `200 to `500 per month.
At present only widows under the age bracket of 40 to 59 years are entitled for the pension benefits. Delivering a keynote address here on “Agrarian Single Women: Distress, Access to Livelihood, Services and Justice”, Mr Ramesh said, “Four crore such women in the country face a bleak future as there is no sufficient help forthcoming for them”.
While informing that the pension amount would be increased, Mr Ramesh said that he had already taken up the matter with the finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Mr Ramesh also said that all attempts would be made to provide more and more jobs to single women under MG-NREGA and all such people who had worked for 15 days in a year under the scheme would be entitled for availing the benefits of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana.
He informed that out of 12 crore beneficiaries of the scheme so far, 25 per cent of them are women-headed households.