Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Helpline on disaster reaps farm distress -Imran Ahmed Siddiqui

Helpline on disaster reaps farm distress -Imran Ahmed Siddiqui

Share this article Share this article
published Published on May 6, 2015   modified Modified on May 6, 2015

-The Telegraph

New Delhi: A home ministry helpline offering information on quake-hit Nepal has been swamped by Indian farmers airing their distress, embarrassing a government already under the Opposition's cosh for its "anti-farmer" policies.

Compounding the discomfiture, most of the callers are demanding the Rs 15 lakh that Narendra Modi had, during last year's election campaign, promised to deposit in every bank account after retrieving black money from abroad, ministry officials said.

"We don't know what to tell them, we just say that even our accounts haven't received the money," a joint secretary in the ministry said. The helpline numbers are: 011-23093564, 23093566, 26701728 and 26701729.

The calls come at a time the Opposition is raring to exploit widespread discontent at the government's handling of agrarian distress.

Officials said that queries from people with relatives in Nepal dominated the calls for the first couple of days after the helplines were set up within hours of the April 25 earthquake.

"After that, the calls have mostly been from agitated farmers asking when they would receive the promised Rs 15 lakh. We have been getting 150 to 200 such calls a day," a senior home ministry official said.

"It's deeply embarrassing. Most of them speak of crushing debts. They accuse the government of ignoring their problems and cheating the poor with false promises."

BJP president Amit Shah had suggested in February that Modi's Rs 15-lakh statement had been a mere " jumla" - Urdu for "figure of speech" - inviting an avalanche of derision.

But while the perceived gaffe was seen as an own goal ahead of the Delhi Assembly polls, it seems not to have doused the hopes of hinterland tillers. Most of the calls have come from Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, officials said.

Many of the farmers demanded their calls be transferred to the Prime Minister or home minister Rajnath Singh so they could talk to them directly, an official said.

During the general election campaign, Rajnath had said the black money would be brought back within 100 days if the BJP was voted to power.

"Many of the farmers said their concerns would have been addressed had the Modi government kept its word about bringing the black money back," an official said.

"Some cited the recent farmer suicides and wondered if they would themselves live to see the promised sum arrive in their accounts."

Ministry bureaucrats recalled a somewhat similar experience when, in March 2010, then home minister P. Chidambaram had publicised his fax number asking senior Maoist leaders to send him undertakings to "abjure" violence.

The rebels never bothered to reply but the ministry received hundreds of fax messages from ordinary citizens complaining of police harassment, bribe demands from officials and the like.

Such complaints from the public to North Block are nothing new, of course --- the home ministry has a public grievance cell for precisely that reason.

The cell, headed by a joint secretary, receives complaints online and tries to address them "by taking the matter up with the state government officials concerned", a ministry bureaucrat said.

But the latest earfuls from farmers over a helpline, he admitted, had left the department stuck for answers.

 


The Telegraph, 6 May, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150506/jsp/frontpage/story_18532.jsp#.VUmHAZNr9v0


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close