VIP tractor subsidy

Bundelkhand, a forested area long, long ago, is the darkness close to the geographical heart of India. Barren of vegetation, its inhabitants poor, this region is long deprived politically and economically. Rescuing it was never going to be easy, and the proposed division of Uttar Pradesh — which envisages the state’s share of Bundelkhand as a new state — is still a proposal, formally made as recently as last month. As is always the case with a humanitarian necessity, the crisis had to be met first at the subsistence level. The Centrally approved package of Rs 7,200 crore, granted in 2009, sought to make a dent in the poverty and drought by helping farmers procure farm machinery, with the largest subsidy of Rs 45,000 reserved for the most essential of them all — tractors.

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