Government sensitive towards farmers’ issues: Minister

New Delhi, March 29 (IANS) The central government is “sensitive” towards the problems and challenges faced by the farmers and all possible help is being provided to them, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

“Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have met various farmers’ delegations (here),” Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the House while responding to concerns of the members about bad condition of the farmers.

Truchi Siva from DMK, D. Raja of Communist Party of India and Sitaram Yechury from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) raised the matter in the Upper House of Parliament.

According to Yechury, the farmers protesting at Jantar Mantar claim that they were forced to survive on rats.

“I went to meet them. They showed me live rats saying this is what we eat to survive,” he said, urging the government to waive off their agricultural loans. “It’s a serious matter.”

“Loan waiver is a must… otherwise the situation would go from bad to worse,” Raja said.

Siva and other members also asked the government to speed up river-linking programme so that problems related to irrigation could also be solved.

After Sitharaman answered their queries, the members again stood up urging Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien to direct the minister to comment on their demand for loan waiver.

Kurien then said the minister cannot make statement on such an important matter without consulting other ministers concerned.