It is not an overstatement to say that the Rythu Bandhu is the most trending topic of the assembly election in Telangana with the BRS party and Indian National Congress blaming each other for the Election Commission of India’s decision to halt the welfare payments to farmers. Rythu Bandhu is a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme to land owning farmers. It was announced just ahead of 2018 assembly elections by BRS. It has since been controversial, having given birth to various issues related to land ownership and digitisation of land.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyUnder Rythu Bandhu, every individual who is under possession of agricultural land is paid Rs 5,000 per acre for every farming season. If you own 20 acres of land, you would be receiving Rs 1 lakh twice a year with no upper limits for this scheme. If you are a small farmer with 0.5 acre, you would be paid Rs 2,500. This is a disproportionate distribution of state welfare, with people in need receiving less money and a large-land-owning individual receiving extra money from the state. Telangana, which boasts about its deduplication algorithms to exclude people owning a tractor out of state welfare, ostensibly does not use them while distributing DBT to large landowners. In an RTI response, the agriculture department of a district responded saying that the “Rythu Bandhu amount is credited to all farmers having a pattadar passbook, irrespective of whether the land is cultivated or not”. This also reflects the intention of the government to prioritise land owners and not actual cultivators. Chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao, popular as ‘KCR, has been known to propagate the idea that landless farmers are not a priority for BRS. However, there is some acceptance now among the leadership on how there needs to be an upper limit on the Rythu Bandhu. As per Rythu Swarajya Vedika’s (RSV) survey covering 7744 farmers in 34 villages in 20 districts, 36% of farmers in cultivation of agricultural land are tenant farmers. Majority of them were leasing around 5.1 acres on average, and 73% of the tenant farmers have been cultivating the same land for at least for three years or more. These tenant farmers do not benefit in any way because of Rythu Bandhu, where the amount goes directly to landowners, who are neither farmers nor cultivators. This exclusion of cultivators is not limited to Rythu Bandhu, but extends across the farming ecosystem. The agriculture department undertakes a massive crop booking exercise every year to enumerate what crop is being sown in every parcel of land in Telangana. Yet the name of the actual cultivator and the crop they are cultivating is missing in this survey. The department is forced to note down the landowner by default and in many cases, the crops are also wrongly noted. This crop booking data is used by various departments like Markfed and civil supplies to procure the crop. And because of the lack of inclusion of the tenant farmer in the crop booking process, they cannot sell their crop officially and need to depend on the amount being deposited to land owners’ accounts during procurement too. It’s also important to note that a majority of farmer suicides are also by tenant farmers as per studies.This policy of the state to only recognise the land owner as a farmer and linking ownership to farming has created issues within the agriculture ecosystem. The land digitisation programme under Land Records Updating Project (LRUP) led to the creation of the Integrated Land Records Management Portal, Dharani. The Telangana government which was supposed to do an extensive land survey to identify land holding had failed to do so, and instead used land records from 1937 to quickly finish the project in three months for 10,000 villages. This haste was carried out largely because of the need to identify land holding farmers to quickly transfer the Rythu Bandhu to them as analysed by Professors Ramkumar and Padmini Suresh. The LRUP process was done so quickly at the end of 2017, to make sure a database was ready before elections in 2018 for implementation of Rythu Bandhu scheme. This led to several issues across the state which remain unresolved even five years after the implementation. This has led to complaints from individuals who don’t receive Rythu Bandhu and also suffer from several problems of sale of land, transfer of land, inability to apply for crop loans or insurance and all other associated issues that arise simply because their land title is not in their name. In Hajipur mandal of Mancherial district, in an Adivasi Gond village, one particular landowner had given away his land during the land struggle in Telangana to Adivasis. Yet the Dharani portal records approximately 1,400 acres of land in 98 different survey numbers under his name with a particular status of “not signed – sold out”. The “not signed” here indicates the digital records of land have not been digitally signed using e-Sign, a Aadhaar-backed digital signature mandated for purchase and sale of land, replacing physical fingerprints. The Adivasis have been trying to follow up on this but to no avail. Promises that land records can’t be changed without biometrics under Aadhaar plus blockchain-powered Dharani portal ignore the reality on the ground. In another Adivasi Gond village in the same Hajipur Mandal, one zamindar has his name under three survey numbers for 22 acres. He has been taking Rs 2,22,000 per year, while the Adivasis actually cultivating the land for decades toil it out without any support from the state. There are several more such cases in the same village. Many Adivasis had written documents from the landowners from 50 years ago but due to a fire, most documents were destroyed as all the houses were burnt in the village. Helplessly, for past many years, Adivasis have reached out to the landowners in Hyderabad and asked them to settle the lands in their name. The owners have asked for exorbitant rates.In Chennur mandal of Mancherial district, where the Koya tribes live, in an Adivasi village, around 66 acres is now under the name of older landowners. In one case, around 36 acres is under the name of the son of an older landowner. He would also be receiving Rythu Bandhu grants of Rs 3,60,000 per year given the land is noted in Dharani with even e-KYC and e-Sign updated. This amount should have ideally gone to the cultivating Koya Adivasis who otherwise get no other support from the government.While the land owning Zamindars are eligible to receive Rythu Bandhu, Adivasis with more than 10 acres of land do not receive the same. The government justifies this exclusion by citing the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006, which limits Adivasis to owning no more than 10 acres of land. So someone who owns 12 acres, gets nothing, instead of receiving Rythu Bandhu for 10 acres. Individuals with more than 10 acres are disqualified because of these guidelines in the FRA Act and hence are not eligible for the Rythu Bandhu scheme. A circular from the Commissioner Tribal Welfare to at least consider Adivasis to be eligible for 10 acres was largely ignored.Digitisation woesAnother big issue which Dalit and Adivasi farmers cultivating in assigned land are facing is that many of them are not able to get electronic patta passbooks (PPB) for their assigned land which has been given by the government itself for them to cultivate. Because of the lack of e-PPB, they are losing out on all welfare schemes support like Rythu Bandhu, PM-Kisan, crop loans, loan waiver and so on. Even those who got their assigned land pattas, have no option in Dharani to make any corrections. As part of their election manifesto, BRS now wants to allow conversion of assigned lands to normal patta lands which can be sold in the market.In a response to a petition filed by many farmers both (land owning and tenants) who were affected by crop loss, demanding the government of Telangana give them crop loss compensation mandated as per Disaster Management Act, 2005, the government tried to argue that as it has disbursed Rythu Bandhu for that season, it has supported the farmers. As illustrated before, Rythu Bandhu is targeted for land owners and does not in any way diminish the responsibility of the government to provide appropriate compensation and input subsidy under the National Disaster Management Act, 2005. Also Telangana has been the only state which doesn’t implement a crop insurance policy since 2020.In the case of Rythu Bandhu when there are transactional failures or errors in Dharani, the officials try for a few times and in case the issue isn’t sorted, they don’t give a chance to the farmer to correct it and the farmer has to let go of the amount. The farmers have no way of demanding it later. In case of PM-Kisan, for instance, the past season’s amount is credited to a farmer’s account once an issue with DBT failure is corrected. The problems of Aadhaar are also extended to Dharani. If someone cannot do e-KYC or e-Sign because of problems with their Aadhaar, they cannot get a PPB and thus, no Rythu Bandhu. SreeHarsha Thanneeru is a volunteer with Rythu Swarajya Vedika in Telangana, working on farmers rights and entitlements.