Staff Reporter

Shillong, Feb 16: Opposition All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) leader and former chief minister Mukul Sangma today said the party is watching every decision of the eleven months old MDA-2 government.

Sangma while refusing to comment on the performance of the present government said, “Because I have decided in as far as I am concerned to at least give them one year (time) to show their commitment level towards addressing the concerns of the people, towards addressing the concerns of everybody, towards assuming the sole responsibility of protecting the interest of the people and the state.”

“We are watching every decision of the government we are scrutinizing and based on that we will take on the government, we will responsibly perform our responsibilities as opposition and that is what we are looking forward to doing,” he told reporters.

Stating that apart from illegal coal mining, there are many issues confronting the state, the former chief minister said, “Today, I have always encouraged farming. I myself also do a lot of farming. You will be surprised to see that this year I have landed selling up my arecanut at Rs 3700 per bag. What is the reason? We are analysing and we are trying to find out. You have all the inputs, you are aware.”

He said that the farmers have collectively put all efforts to have a sustainable source of income from farming and from horticulture. He also recalled how it was difficult to convince people to shift from jhuming cultivation to sustainable farming (horticulture).

“It is the responsibility of all policy makers and everybody to ensure that you go on putting in that kind of effort with utmost sense of sincerity and commitment to increase their earnings. Why do we talk about various other interventions to help livelihoods on a sustainable basis, the idea is to increase the income and not only increase but it should be in a sustained manner. It should have this increasing graph,” Sangma said adding “However,  you go to the farmers, ask them what is happening. This time even the price of the broomstick is half of the prices of the preceding year’s market.”

He said the farmers are facing multiple challenges at present.

“Today I will tell you one thing, if the farmers would not have this access to sustainable income from the farming, you would have seen more school dropouts, dislocation of livelihoods and resulting in negative fallout. Today, it is therefore important to see that anything that harms the farming community or anything that derails the sustainable income of the farmers must be taken headon by everybody,” Sangma stated.