Farmers’ Empowerment through Rythu Bandhu S...

Farmers’ Empowerment through Rythu Bandhu Scheme in Telangana

Author Name : Dr. B. Sandhya Rani

 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56025/IJARESM.2022.1081949

 

ABSTRACT

India is an agrarian country and agriculture plays a predominant role on the lives of large population, who are dependent on agriculture with low income.  Agriculture is a way of life, a tradition that has shaped the culture and economic life of the people of Telangana.About 60% of the state’s population resides in rural areas.  Agriculture provides livelihood to more than half of the state’s workforce and is crucial for restoring rural economy. However, agriculture sector in the State is prone to frequent droughts, resulting in distress among farming community. Having understood that drought proofing of agriculture is critical to mitigate the natural curse on agriculture sector, the state adopted a strategy of large-scale public investment along with direct support to farmers through various interventions.

The present study is taken up to examine the distribution of Agriculture Holdings as per size of classes of farmers and operated area in Telangana State and a comparative study is done on zone-wise beneficiaries of farmers from Rythu Bandhu Scheme. 

It can be observed from the study that the number of operational holdings belonging to various categories and the land operated by them shows that the share of small and marginal land holdings constitute 85.85%, while their share in total area was only 55.45%. The mean number of farmer beneficiaries of Rythu Bandhu Scheme is highest in the case of Sounthern Zone of Telangana (244769.25); followed by Central region (182284.7) and least in the case of Northern Telangana (157595.5).  There is a high positive correlation between the number of farmer beneficiaries and Net Area Sown (r=0.87626341); number of farmer beneficiaries and population (r=0.753874392).  The relationship between literacy and number of farmer beneficiaries; and urban population and number of farmer beneficiaries is low negative (-0.106969347; -0.18830474 respectively), which means illiterate and rural farmers have benefitted more out of the scheme. 

Keywords: Rythu Bandhu Scheme, Agricultural Holdings, Net Sown Area, Farmers.