Punjab's Dream of Sweet Oranges Turns Sour

[rgiridhar]

Punjab's Dream of Sweet Oranges Turns Sour

Bureaucratic tussles and dithering at the political level have turned Punjab’s dream of the sweet orange sour. Faced with grave ecological problems created by the wheat-paddy rotation, the Punjab government had come out with a diversification plan whose focus area was horticulture.

While the Punjab Horticulture Department had been asked to implement the programmes planned at the national level to promote horticulture under the National Horticulture Mission (NHM), the state government, on its own, had created the Council for Citrus and Agri Juicing that is facing an uncertain future due to lack of support on the part of the state government authorities.

At the moment, the council, that had taken the project to plant citrus fruits, especially the best varieties of sweet orange, kinnow, lime and lemon, is on the verge of financial collapse. It has financial liabilities to the tune of Rs 8 crore, but has only Rs 3 crore as balance of loan amount arranged by it on the basis of bank guarantee given by the state government.

During the next few days, the council is supposed to make the payment of rent, Rs 10,000 per acre, to farmers, whose land it has taken for 12 years to grow the citrus fruits. It had prepared a plan to grow citrus fruits on 20,000 acres, for which bank guarantee worth Rs 50 crore was required from the state government.

However, as the government showed lack of interest, the council had to cut down the proposal to only 5,500 acres. But till date, the council has covered only 3,000 acres under citrus plants and of the remaining 2,500 acres, some of the area is ready for plantation as the requisite infrastructure has been created there. But the plantation project has slowed down because of the indifferent attitude of the state government.

Even the state government has not released the subsidy that was provided by the NHM, as the council project was covered under the mission schemes. On preparing each acre, where plantation has already been done, the council has spent Rs 40,000. It has laid down the drip irrigation system etc. Besides, it has been spending money on the management of each of the acre under plantation.

The council has created a nursery at Jallowal that has the best varieties of 15 lakh plants. Its capacity can be raised up to 40 lakh plants. Under the agreement, the land taken on rent from farmers by the council was to be retained by it for 12 years under its control. After 12 years, it is to be handed over to the farmers concerned. As fruiting for picking starts at plant’s age of four, the council and the farmer were to share the income from plants on the 50-50 basis.

Now, the council has pegged its hopes on Cannizaro, a company with its headquarters in Hong Kong. Cannizaro, that is convinced that Punjab’s 80 per cent land can be utilised to grow world’s best citrus fruits, is keen to cover 1 lakh acres in the first five years and 5 lakh acres in 10 years.