Save debt-ridden farmers: Rana Gurjeet Singh

Chandigarh, March 8

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Cabinet Minister Rana Gurjeet Singh has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his urgent intervention to save Punjab as “the state is on the cusp of disaster” and appealed to all political parties to rise above their partisan considerations and draw a common minimum programme for the state.

Stressing the revival of agriculture, he said: “Farmers are now debt ridden and can hardly survive and sustain with agriculture. Since the onset of the Green Revolution, land holdings have mostly been reduced to one-fourth. Majority of the farmers in Punjab, about 70 percent, hold less than five acres. An entire family cannot survive on that.

Drawing the Prime Minister’s attention to depleting water table, he said it was the most serious threat to Punjab’s survival as the stateruns the risk of turning into a desert within 20 to 25 years —