'Absolute nothing': DMK says TVK agriculture budget renames schemes and short-changes farmers

CHENNAI: The first agriculture budget of the TVK government was meant to be a statement of intent. For the Opposition, it became evidence. Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin called the budget 'absolute nothing' and accused Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay of failing to address the concerns that farmers have raised for months, from debt to water.

Inside the Assembly, DMK legislators wore black shirts in protest. Their charge was specific: that the budget recycles and renames existing schemes instead of bringing fresh relief, and that the election promise of a complete crop loan waiver for farmers owning up to five acres has been whittled down in office. A limit first announced at Rs 50,000 and later raised to Rs 75,000, the DMK said, is not the full waiver that was promised on the campaign trail.

The second charge was about the Cauvery. Udhayanidhi accused Karnataka of refusing to release Tamil Nadu's share of water and criticised the state government for not convening an all-party meeting to present a united front on the Cauvery and Mekedatu dispute. 'We have repeatedly demanded an all-party meeting on the Cauvery and Mekedatu issues, but the Chief Minister has remained silent,' he said.

The DMK has also given notice of an adjournment motion to the Speaker seeking a discussion on the river dispute and the difficulties faced by farmers. That matters because it moves the argument from press statements to the floor of the House, where the government will have to answer on record: what has been waived, what has merely been renamed, and what is the plan when the river does not arrive on time.

For farmers, the test is not the language of a budget speech. It is whether a loan notice stops arriving, whether water reaches the tail end of a canal, and whether a government that promised change can distinguish between announcing a scheme and delivering it. On those measures, the Opposition says, the first agriculture budget has left the field exactly as it found it.