Farmers may be poor but so are we, says state

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">MUMBAI: The state budget has temporarily solved the demand of free power for farmers. While the clamour for free power—taken up by the ruling and the Opposition parties for reasons of political expediency in an election year—continues, the state government knows better and has merely pared down the price farmers pay for power.<br /><br />The budget proposes to reduce the price of power from 50 paise to 25 paise per unit for farmers.This is a good enough pre-election sop as many of the farmers themselves are not keen on getting free power. Said N D Patil, president of the Maharashtra Rajya Shetkari Vij Sangharsh Samiti, "We don''t want free power.We want a reliable and steady flow of power at an affordable rate especially in view of the falling prices of agricultural produce."<br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Mantralaya</span> officials say a lot of brainstorming went into the decision. Among the main factors that worked against giving free power was that such a move would have saddled the cash-strapped government with a subsidy bill of Rs 2,100 crore. It already part-subsidises the farmers'' power consumption— it paid Rs 850 crore this year to the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) for supplying power to farmers.<br /><br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Mantralaya</span> officials said this move would have cut into the social sector budgets of the government. "A larger power burden might affect allocations for health and education," agrees Girish Sant of Prayas, an NGO.<br /><br />More importantly, officials pointed out that free power wouldn''t really have helped too many farmers as only one-fourth of the state''s 88 lakh farmers have irrigation pump sets which use power to plough fields. In addition, given the magnitude of drought in the state, it is very likely that groundwater resources have dried up in many areas, making power redundant, said a <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Mantralaya</span> official. In terms of a larger picture, free power would have undone all the good work done by the MSEB in the last 10 to 15 years.<br /><br />"It would have made metering redundant and energy accounting impossible. In turn, this would have impacted the MSEB''s struggle to control its transmission and distribution losses, which have been brought down by six per cent in the last two years," said an MSEB official. The proposal for free power also runs contrary to the draft National Tariff Policy, which advocated that power tariff for all categories be based on the cost of supply to each category.</div> </div>