Cong behind agrarian crisis: Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: With the Opposition parties trying to push the government in a corner over the farmers’ unrest and agrarian unrest, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday asserted that the NDA government’s policy to pump in more resources into rural areas has improved agricultural productivity and the quality of lives of the people in villages while the Congress’s policy was only slogans.

In an article on his social media page, the minister claimed that while the Narendra Modi government assumed office on May 26, 2014, “stress in the agricultural sector was not born thereafter.” He claimed that it was “inadequacy of the resources” pumped into the agricultural sector by the Congress that led to both an agrarian distress and an inadequate quality of life in the rural areas  

Mr Jaitley said with the current level of investment in the next two decades, the infrastructure in rural areas will come at par with that in the cities.

The minister’s remarks came in the backdrop of Opposition party’s allegations of ignoring rural India and agriculture sector and the last week’s massive protest in the national capital by farmers across the country.

“Removing the agrarian distress and improving the quality of life in rural areas cannot be done by slogans alone. From 1971 onwards, the Congress policy was slogans and not resources,” Mr Jaitley wrote in a blog titled “India’s rural sector”.

The NDA government has pumped in resources into the rural areas, which have improved infrastructure, the quality of life of people living therein and increased agricultural productivity, he said. The policy measures have been taken to ensure remunerative prices to the farmers, the minister added.