Rehab Package For Tobacco Growers On Cards

New Delhi: The Commerce Ministry is devising a rehabilitation package for flue-cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco farmers in its bid to shift them to alternative crops so that the growers are not left to the market forces and their interests secured and safeguarded.

Official sources told Business Line here that in 2006-07 as many as 87,194 growers (46,533 in Andhra Pradesh and 40,641 in Karnataka) registered with the Tobacco Board-raised FCV crop on an area of 2.05 lakh hectares. FCV tobacco needs a civil structure called barn for curing of the tobacco and the Tobacco Board grants licence to such barns every year.

Every FCV tobacco growers has to possess a barn either owned or leased in order to obtain a licence from the Board. Over and above this overhead cost on barns, the farmers have to possess additional infrastructural facilities such as pandals and bulking sheds for bulking, storage and grading of the leaf during the crop season at the barn.

The sources said since the FCV tobacco farmers had invested substantial amount in construction of barn and the supporting infrastructure, the proposed rehabilitation must factor in a fair compensation for dismantling of these barns and ensuring that the farmers do not revert to tobacco cultivation.

When contacted about the proposal currently being worked out by the Tobacco Board, the Union Minister of State for Commerce, Jairam Ramesh, recalled that early this year he had announced in Andhra Pradesh that in the next ten years 50 per cent of the area under tobacco cultivation should be brought under alternative crops.

He said that India being a signatory to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, there is a specific provision in part IV under Article 17 of the Convention which deals with provision of economically viable alternatives to the tobacco growers and workers.

Ramesh said that besides diversification to other crops, he had also held discussion with scientists about the possibility of developing non-carcinogenic use of tobacco particularly in pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, since tobacco is a hardy, drought-resistant crop providing livelihood security to lakhs of growers in the country. He said that the rehabilitation package being on the anvil estimates that to target 50 per cent of the barns in the next ten years, a sum of Rs 2,422 crore would be required. The sources said that the domestic production of cigarettes during 2006-07 is roughly 107 billion sticks. The required funds could be gleaned by levy of five paise cess on each cigarette sold in the domestic market for a fund dubbed.

This would help garner Rs 535 crore every year and it takes 10 years to pool the required sum for the rehabilitation fund. They said shifting of tobacco growers to other crops is like displacing them from their traditional calling.

In order to make the farmers switch over to other crops, they have to be provided with attractive package for rehabilitation, they said adding that the world over the entire resources for such packages are mobilised from the cigarette manufacturing companies with the burden falling on the ultimate consumers.