Anantapur, June 24: All-party committee leaders have decided to organise a Jail Bharo agitation and lay siege to the agriculture department joint director's office on June 26 in protest against the alleged negligence of the Congress government in solving farmers' problems. Speaking at a meeting organised at the CPI office here on Tuesday, leaders of the CPI, CPI(M), Mana Party, BJP and Telugu Desam (TD) said that farmers were facing problems due to shortage of fertilisers, seeds and diesel.

By C. ANAND REDDY

P. Sainath All transactions in the police yard occur under intense public scrutiny. In the marketplace, dealings are more opaque.

Tiruchi Bureau "The basal fertilizer requirement for core delta districts is about 20,000 tonnes' TIRUCHI: Just as kuruvai cultivation is gaining momentum in delta districts, there have been widespread complaints of scarcity of fertilizers. Though the timely release of water has raised farmers' hopes, their biggest worry this season is the scarcity of basal fertilizers, especially Di-ammonium phosphate (DAP). The government has announced that it had already distributed over 22,000 tonnes of DAP, but the complaints persist.

Nagpur: Rising petroleum prices are likely to make PET products costly. With crude on the boil, polymers the raw material for making plastic products have become dearer by over Rs 10,000 per tonne within a month. As a result there is a likelihood of plastic packaging material manufacturers passing on the cost hike to endusers.

While the UPA government boasts of the Right to Information Act as among its major achievements, its own bureaucracy is clearly not impressed. Take the case of fertiliser secretary J.S Sarma who has warned the fertiliser industry and fertiliser associations against speaking to the media The secretary has apparently even gone to the extent of saying that he will stop all payment of subsidies to the industry if anyone spoke of fertiliser shortages. He has been claiming that there are adequate supplies of fertilisers in the country but industry sources dismiss his figures.

C H Prashanth Reddy / Hyderabad June 19 The current fertiliser scarcity in the country and the mounting subsidy bill, which is expected to reach Rs 95,000 crore this year, can be partly solved by checking "injudicious usage" of the agricultural input and reducing imports by 20 per cent, feel manufacturers and experts. Reducing the availability of urea in various states by 2 million tonnes (MT) alone will result in savings of Rs 4,000 crore, say fertiliser manufacturers.

The government today reduced prices of complex fertilisers by up to Rs 2,296 per tonne to encourage farmers to use them instead of regular urea and DAP so that soil fertility is maintained. The Union Cabinet had taken a decision in this regard on June 12. Complex fertilisers would now be available in the price range of Rs 5,121-Rs 8,185 per tonne from Rs 6,980-Rs 9,080 per tonne earlier, down by about Rs 843-Rs 2,296 per tonne.

P. Sainath The fertilizer shortage might even be overcome just now. But the crisis won't go away. It and many more to come are built into both, what's going on in world capitalism

Meena Menon MUMBAI: Farmers' agitation against shortage of fertilizers in Maharashtra resulted in traffic blockade on the Nagpur-Hyderabad highway on Saturday morning. The angry farmers, led by the Shiv Sena's Ramtek MP Prakash Jadhav, agitated for over an hour and burnt tyres. The State is admittedly facing a 60 per cent shortage of fertilizers and farmers in Vidharbha and Marathwada have been protesting for a while.