Pension for elderly farmers and fishermen ahead of Durga Puja

Kolkata: The initiative of Mamata Banerjee government to provide the two-months pension under 'Jai Bangla' scheme in one go has come as a major relief for elderly farmers, fishermen, folk artists and people from tribal communities ahead of Durga Puja. This comes when economic crises due to the nationwide lockdown have left a deep impact on their lives.

In March, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had announced the bringing of all schemes of providing pension to elderly people above 60 years under Jai Bangla scheme. Taposili Bandhu for scheduled caste and Jai Johar for scheduled tribe were also introduced at the same time. The amount of pension was increased to Rs 1,000 per month.

Considering that getting the pension of two months together - that is Rs 2,000 - in one go will be more helpful for the beneficiaries at the time of Covid, the Chief Minister had directed to release it together for the months of April and May, June and July, August and September and October and November.

All the beneficiaries including 1 lakh elderly farmers and 20,000 fishermen have received the pension of two months together this month.

Receiving Rs 2,000 each ahead of Durga Puja has come as a relief for them as they do not have to be dependable on anyone else for financial support.

Similarly 9.5 lakh scheduled caste and 2.75 lakh from scheduled tribe were benefitted with the initiative of the state government.

It was in 2018, the state government had started giving old-age pension to 32,000 more farmers taking the total number to 1 lakh. It was then only the monthly pension was increased to Rs 1,000 from Rs 750 for each farmer.

The state government has taken the move of continuing to provide pension to the elderly people despite acute financial crisis with the fall in revenue in the state exchequer as the economy has nosedived due to the nationwide lockdown.

This comes when the Centre has not cleared Rs 60,000 crore including more than Rs 4000 crore GST compensation to the state despite being repeatedly requested by the Chief Minister. The state Finance Minister Amit Mitra had also slammed the Centre for putting forward the options of borrowing before the state governments to compensate the GST shortfall "destroying the state's financial health and the country's federal structure".

The series of initiatives of the Mamata Banerjee government including pension for elderly farmers have not only increased the farmers income by three times in the state, but also not a single death of farmers was reported in Bengal in 2018 and 2019 when 10,281 persons involved in the farm sector committed suicide in the country in 2019.

The average income of farmers went up by 3.2 times as it was Rs 91,000 for a farmer in 2010-11 and it increased to Rs 2.91 lakh in 2017-18.