MP Tarun Vijay seeks agro panel for women farmers

DEHRADUN: BJP Rajya Sabha MP from the state Tarun Vijay today demanded the setting up of a separate agro commission for women farmers and an agro women’s bank ( Mahila Krishak Bank) to help bridge the atrocious gender gap in wages and financial support prevailing in the rural sector.

Tribune News service

Dehradun, May 6

BJP Rajya Sabha MP from the state Tarun Vijay today demanded the setting up of a separate agro commission for women farmers and an agro women’s bank ( Mahila Krishak Bank) to help bridge the atrocious gender gap in wages and financial support prevailing in the rural sector. He raised the issue during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha.

He said, “No one cares to pay attention towards the family a farmer leaves behind after committing suicide. The women in the family have to face hardships and take care of children as well as to continue doing farm work.”

Vijay said women constituted 66 per cent of the agricultural workforce. Around 48 per cent self-employed farmers were women and 64 per cent of the informal sector workforce depending on agriculture was women. They work more, save more, still were being paid less in many areas compared to male farmers and farm workers.

He said the plight of most rural women had been pathetic since they had to collect firewood, fetch drinking water, search fodder to feed cattle, work on their meagre land to raise crops and as labourers on other farms, take care of children etc.

Agriculture and allied sectors in India employ 89.5 per cent of the total female labour. About 84 per cent women are engaged in agriculture, either as cultivators or labourers as against 67 per cent male workers. Unfortunately, they never appear on the radar of those who keep on sympathising with male farmers and women farmers are hardly recognised as a separate, independent farmer community.

Citing examples from his home state Uttarakhand, Vijay said,” A woman works for 3,485 hours in a year on a one hectare farm as compared with 1,212 hours by a man and 1,064 hours by a pair of bullocks.

She saves, spends money on children, is the best re-payer of loans, still she never appears as an independent, significant contributor to the rural economy and national GDP. I demand that the government must establish an agro commission for women farmers to take care of wages parity and focus on empowering women farmers as an independent entity. I also urge the government to start agro women’s bank( Mahila Krishak Bank) to focus attentively on helping women farmers financially,” he added.

Vijay’s proposal was supported by MPs belonging to the Congress, the CPI, the CPM, the JD (U), and the BSP, besides from his party.