Telangana Farm Support Scheme Rythu Bharosa Faces Criticism Over Broken Promises
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When Telangana flagged off its long-delayed launch of Rythu Bharosa, an agriculture investment support scheme, it evoked a mixed reception. While there is a sigh of relief that the bi-annual cash disbursal (during rabi and kharif seasons) will resume starting January 26, some farmers’ groups expressed disappointment over unfulfilled aspects of the Congress’s election promises.
One of the six core electoral guarantees, Rythu Bharosa, featured prominently in Congress’s electoral campaigns ahead of the 2023 Assembly election. Congress gave itself a 100-day deadline to enforce the these guarantees and faced criticism for the year-long delay.
The scheme isn’t a new initiative. It is the rechristening of the Rythu Bandhu, a flagship scheme of the previous Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) government. BRS (formerly known as Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS) launched Rythu Bandhu in 2018 to support farmers with cash of Rs.4,000 per acre per season, in the early weeks of every crop season. The money was supposed to help farmers meet early investment needs such as seeds during the time of sowing and reduce the dependence on high-interest debts. The scheme was launched a few months ahead of the Assembly election in 2018, and in its election manifesto, BRS promised to increase the amount to Rs.5,000 per acre per season.
Two Telangana governments spent Rs.80,453 crore on the agriculture scheme—11 rounds of payment by BRS and one round by Congress since 2023. The Rythu schemes have been one of the largest DBT spendings, accounting for at least 50 per cent of the annual budgetary allocation for the agriculture department.
There were two primary criticisms of BRS’s Rythu Bandhu: unconditional cash transfers (amount proportional to land owned without any upper limit); and the exclusion of the tenant farmers. Despite several representations from farmer groups and activists during the two terms of BRS, the concerns remained unaddressed by the government.
Ahead of the 2023 election, the Congress promised their version of the policy would be a more effective one. The party’s manifesto pledged cash support to both landowning farmers and tenants. The Congress also promised to increase the amount to Rs.7,500 per crop season (a total of Rs.15,000 per acre per year). The final promise was that Rythu Bharosa was to deposit Rs.6,000 per crop season (a total of Rs.12,000 per year) to all landless agricultural labour families of the State. Prominent Congress leaders (now ministers in the cabinet) had campaigned about the wastage of public funds on absentee landlords.
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On January 4, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy announced that the government would pay Rs.6,000 per acre per crop season (a total of Rs.12,000 per acre annually and not the promised Rs.15,000 per acre annually) due to State’s prevailing financial constraint.
Meanwhile, the Congress government also announced the Indiramma Athmiya Bharosa (IAB) scheme for families of landless agricultural workers, but concerns about the beneficiary eligibility criteria linger. For instance, there is no mention of tenant farmers and no assurance about their inclusion in the future inclusion. Opposition parties have demanded that the government stick to the promised amount and extend support to tenants.
Old wine in a new bottle?After it came into power in December 2023, the Congress deposited one round of farm investment support for the rabi season. At that time, the Congress didn’t make any changes to the Rythu Bandhu (BRS scheme) as it had promised but assured the farmers that changes were in the offing.
The amount for rabi was usually deposited into farmers’ accounts by January-end, but the implementation during rabi 2024 was slow. In May, the Election Commission of India (EC) pulled up Reddy for violating the model code of conduct and speaking about the ongoing disbursal of the scheme. The EC enforced a freeze on the deposits till May 13.
By the time election results were announced on June 4, the kharif season had arrived. Telangana’s farmers expected the State government to deposit the amount. Instead, the State formed a cabinet sub-committee on July 1, 2024, to assess the shortcomings in the implementation of the scheme during the BRS period and devise modalities for future implementation.
The sub-committee held several district-level (erstwhile districts of Adilabad, Warangal, Mahabubnagar, Karimnagar, and Khammam) consultations with farmers and other stakeholders for suggestions. Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), a farmers’ rights organisation working in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, obtained the minutes of meetings of these consultations through RTI.
Frontline learnt that during these consultations, one of the most recurring demands from farmers was to impose an upper limit on the landholding of the beneficiaries. A majority of the participating farmers believed that only those who own fewer than 10 acres of farmland should benefit from investment support.
With cash transfers dependent on the extent of land ownership, inequality has been enmeshed with the investment support scheme since the beginning (see infographic below). Recommendations to the Congress government varied from a cap of 7.5 acres to 10 acres.
There were other alternatives that RSV had submitted to the government after a consultation with all farmer organisations. For instance, one recommendation was that the maximum benefit a landowner receives from the scheme should be fixed at Rs.1 lakh per family per annum (as a family could have split landowning among many family members to circumvent existing land ceiling laws).
Over the past year, there were several media reports about an impending upper limit for the Rythu Bharosa under the Congress government. However, the January announcement by the Chief Minister clarified that there will not be any such restrictions.
“Initially, it [an upper limit] was discussed, but it has been decided that all cultivable land will receive support,” M. Kodanda Reddy, is a senior Congress leader and chairman of Telangana State Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Commission, told Frontline.
During the Assembly sessions in December 2024, a short discussion was held on the findings of the sub-committee and the modalities of Rythu Bharosa. Minister of Agriculture Tummala Nageswara Rao said in the Assembly that they found that between 2019 and 2024, an amount of Rs.21,283.66 crore had been distributed to uncultivated lands. As per the data, 98 lakh acres of uncultivated land benefited in 2023-24 alone (data not provided on what extent of this was agricultural versus non-agricultural land). This number was cited several times during the past year in the public sphere by Congress leaders to back their allegation of wasteful spending by BRS.
There were speculations that Congress would deposit money only for land under cultivation for that season. However, under Rythu Bharosa guidelines issued by the Congress government, all land fit for cultivation will receive cash deposits, irrespective of whether they are currently being cultivated or not.
A senior official confirmed to Frontline that the only change in the implementation of the investment support scheme is that the government will not deposit money to owners of non-arable lands. “The effort will be now to omit it from the beneficiary list,” the official said. Rumoured estimates are that up to 15 lakh acres could be non-agricultural land such as hillocks, roads, and land converted for other uses (over 150 lakh acres of land was covered under the recent round of investment support scheme in 2023-24).
Experts believe that among other reasons, the pressure of the local body election has influenced the decisions of Congress. “The government seems to have given in to the opposition BRS leaders’ pressure to not impose any acre limit or condition of cultivation for issuing Rythu Bharosa, which basically means that this government is toeing the same line as the BRS government,” said Kiran Vissa, co-founder of RSV.
Not withstanding the criticism about the disproportionate advantage to big landowners, the investment support scheme has had some positive benefits for marginal and small farmers. Here, a farmer dries chillies at an agriculture market in Khammam, Telangana. | Photo Credit: G.N. Rao
It would cost the government about Rs.8,500-9,000 crore depending upon how much non-agricultural land they are able to eliminate from the beneficiary list. If the government had implemented its election promise of Rs.7,500 per acre, this would have cost the State an additional Rs.2000 crore. Some farmers groups and opposition parties are demanding that the government also deposit the arrears (amount the farmers were supposed to receive in the kharif season 2024). However, that’s unlikely to happen, as per most government sources.
Notwithstanding the criticism about the disproportionate advantage to big landowners, the investment support scheme has had some positive benefits to marginal and small farmers. This is why farmers’ groups have been insisting on expanding it to other vulnerable sections, such as the tenant farmers.
The paper “Cash Transfers and Landholding Inequality” by Abhishek Shaw, Sawan Rathi, and Anindya S. Chakrabarti studied the effects of Rythu Bandhu on farmer groups. The authors found that “Rythu Bandhu made small and marginal farmers more credit-worthy, enabling fresh borrowing from banks. Also, purpose of this borrowing from bank is done more for investment purposes rather than for self-consumption.”
Tenant farmers remain excludedThe “Land and Livestock Holdings of Households and Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households” (by the National Statistical Office, 2019), showed that nearly 17.5 per cent of operational holdings in Telangana were under tenancy. However, experts have claimed that the real numbers are much higher and have only increased over the years.
Around 70 lakh farmers operate on over 150 lakh acres in Telangana (based on data about Rythu Bandhu beneficiaries and government data). According to their own micro-studies and other enumeration exercises, RSV claims that Telangana has nearly 22 lakh tenant farmers and operates 40 per cent of cultivable land. Revanth Reddy validated this figure during his election campaigns.
Despite the prevalence, tenant farmers’ issues have long been unaddressed in Telangana. During the BRS term, the government took a stand at Assembly sessions, stating that the arrangements between landowners and tenants are private matters. At a 2019 Assembly session, the then Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao, known better as KCR justified removing the “cultivator” column in the adangal/ pahani (land record) and said that it is not the duty of the government to keep an update of who is cultivating a parcel of land. This meant that the tenant farmers could not receive any government support. KCR said on multiple occasions that the landowners could share benefits with tenants if they so desired.
Most tenancy agreements in Telangana (like elsewhere in India) are informal. However, under the Telangana Land Licensed Cultivators Act of 2011, there is a provision for tenant farmers to get a Loan Eligibility Cards (LEC). As per the Act, a tenant farmer could apply for LEC by submitting details of the land owner, survey number, and the land owner’s signature. The card was to serve as an identification of tenant farmers to help them avail of formal credit, insurance, and compensation during disasters, and it would enable them to benefit from other government schemes. RSV activists contended that there has been an unofficial ban on the issuance of LEC cards since 2019.
In September 2023, Reddy wrote an open letter promising to fix the issues of tenant farmers that had were overlooked during the BRS regime. But the recent Rythu Bharosa announcement dashed all such hopes, as the government made no announcement about including tenant farmers in the scheme.
“It’s a huge disappointment that the Chief Minister did not even mention tenant farmers, even though the inclusion of tenants was part of the six guarantees. This is a betrayal of the promises given by the Chief Minister in public letter to tenant farmers and by Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra,” said Vissa.
In the State Focus Paper 2024-25by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) noted how the low issuance of LEC cards leads to the bleak prospects of tenant farmers. NABARD recommended the “Strengthening policy framework for the issue of LEC cards to facilitate financial inclusion of tenant farmers/sharecroppers.”
“We need to identify who the tenant farmers are. It is going to take time,” Kodanda Reddy told Frontline. He couldn’t comment on whether the announcement on tenant farmers could be made for the next round of Rythu Bharosa. Since the Congress government came to power, representations were once again made by farmers’ groups requesting the issuance of LEC cards, but it has yet to materialise.
“The government needs to start identifying and issuing LEC cards on a priority basis,” Pasya Padma of Telangana Rashtra Rythu Sangham, told Frontline. Padma also noted that several actual cultivators were missing from the beneficiary list due to issues in the Dharani portal (a land records management system launched by the BRS government in 2020, criticised for missing records and alleged irregularities), which are yet to be fixed.
Among tenant farmers, the pure tenants (completely landless) could benefit from the newly launched scheme for landless agricultural labour families.
Welfare scheme for the landlessLandless labourers are a segment of the population who are often left out of welfare measures aimed at alleviating the farm crisis. A trickledown was expected from Rythu Bandhu scheme (during BRS term), but research (by Shaw and others) has shown that there was no such effect on the landless. The agenda of land redistribution didn’t feature in the manifestos or recent elections in Telangana. It was in this context that Congress’s promise of a cash-support scheme for landless agricultural families had garnered attention in the run-up to the election. The government’s announcement of the IAB) is thus a relief, even if temporarily so.
Panchayat Raj and Rural Development department would serve as the nodal agencies for implementing the scheme. Under this cash-support scheme, the government will deposit Rs.6,000 per eligible landless labour family twice a year starting January 26. As per a government order, only landless families who have worked for at least 20 days under MGNREGA in the preceding year (2023-24) would be eligible to benefit.
Farmers’ groups and experts contend that a rigid classification of total landlessness would exclude lakhs of vulnerable persons owning tiny parcels of land from IAB. For example, there are over 11 lakh operational holdings in Telangana with a holding size of less than 0.5 acres of land, according to the Agriculture Census 2020-21. While excluded from benefits for the landless, the money these households will get from the crop investment scheme won’t be substantial either, at Rs.3,000 twice a year.
“There is evidence, including NSSO data, that such small parcels of land make people work in others’ fields for livelihood. Such families should be included in both IAB and Rythu Bharosa,” says Padma.
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“We demand that all agricultural workers’ families, including those owning up to 1 acre of land, should benefit under the landless labour scheme,” Vissa from RSV said. He suggests that, alternatively, the minimum investment support under Rythu Bharosa should be Rs.6000 per crop season, for all farmers who own a land parcel of under an acre.
There has been no response from the government on the many recommendations. Members from the farmers’ groups are hopeful that, if not this season, the government will take these aspects into consideration for the next round of cash disbursal.
District-level officials and other government sources, under the condition of anonymity, said that unconditional transfers are hassle-free and straightforward in implementation (in anonymous conversations). But observers raise a concerning question: How much longer can the State afford unconditional cash transfer schemes given its strained financial conditions?
