K’taka farmers present agriculture manifesto on Facebook ahead of polls, are Cong, BJP listening?

Bengaluru : The farmers of Karnataka are not mutely observing the events ahead of the Assembly elections in the southern state. As the state is reeling under agrarian crises with reports of around 3,700 farmers committing suicide in the last few years, the tech-savvy practitioners of agriculture in Karnataka have gone online to come up with their own agriculture manifesto.

According to The Times of India, a Facebook group consisting of around 2.77 lakh active members from across the globe have come up with an agriculture manifesto ahead of the state elections. The agriculture manifesto is a kind of demand draft which the farmers have put up online for the political parties to go through before the elections.The elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly are likely to take place between the last week of April and the first week of May.

Some of the demands the farmers want political parties to add to their respective manifestos are:

- 24 hours power supply for agriculture pump sets
- Market Price Declaration for agricultural products
- Support price announcement when the price falls down for agri products
- Support for using modern technology
- Control of mediator
- Supporting educated people who enter the agriculture sector
- Hiring science graduates to vill?age level of agriculture technological information
- Water refilling system to be made mandatory.
- Taluk level agriculture warehouses.
- Support for cattle farming and products selling.

Speaking to The Times of India, Ramesh Delampadi, one of the group admins, said that earlier group members were from the areas of Puttur and Sullia only, but now it has members from across the world. The members of the Facebook group claim that in the recent times several educated and salaried people have ventured into agriculture. Along with the traditional farming class in the state, the new-bred of educated and tech-savvy farmers want to change in the agriculture sector which is reeling under myriad problems.Earlier, OneIndia reported that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are engaged in a "Twitter war" over farmers in the state. Both the parties claimed on social media that they worked for the betterment of farmers and accused each other of not doing anything to end agrarian distress in Karnataka.