Sisir Mishra
Bhubaneswar, May 29: Depleting coffers, haphazard planning and half-hearted implementation have proved a sure recipe for grounding of some of the pet projects of the state government. A controversial but popular scheme of providing free mobile handsets to farmers is a case in point. The pro-people programme, launched in July 2013 with mega fanfare, has fallen on hard times.
The government had set out to give away free handsets to farmers to help them get real time market information. On the day of its rollout two years back, 5,000 handsets had been distributed with a promise that 15,000 more sets would be distributed in the first phase. Farmers having Kissan Credit Cards were entitled to avail the sop.
A `2 crore budget had been set aside for the purpose in 2013-14 and the state government tied up with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to send free SMSes and voice data to farmers on prices of agriculture produce, fertilisers and weather information.
Director, agricultural marketing was given the responsibility to implement it through Orissa state agriculture marketing (OSAM) board and regulated market committees (RMCs). The cooperation department was made the nodal agency to monitor it.
So much so that then cooperation secretary B Sethi had told media that the state government intended to cover all farmers in the state under the free mobile scheme in a phased manner. However, the government forgot the goalpost the very next year. Although Rs 2.5 crore was allocated for this in 2014-15, no mobile sets were given to farmers last year.
The government wanted to form a panel to look into the nitty-gritty of the process and to ensure it’s implemented as planned from 2014-15 onwards. Sources, however, confirmed that no such committee has been formed till date and the entire corpus is lying unused.
Non-submission of utilisation certificate for the sanctioned money resulted in non-allocation of funds in 2015-16 budget. The Opposition had dubbed the programme as a poll gimmick which would be dropped after elections.
An official cited lack of willingness as a stumbling block for its execution. Cooperation minister Damodar Rout sounded oblivious of the status of the scheme. “I had asked the officials last year to float the tender, but no file has come to me yet,” Rout said. He, however, promised to ensure its quick implementation.