After a year marked by low returns and hollow promises of support, there is still no end in sight to the woes of the rubber growers in Kerala.
The Rubber Price Incentive Scheme (RPIS), launched by the Kerala government to support the rubber farmers, appears to be going off the track with hundreds of thousands of farmers unable to file their applications. With the website ebt.kerala.gov.in suspending its operation on December 6, Rubber Board has instructed Rubber Producers’ Societies (RPSs) to cease uploading on the website until further notice.
In 2023, the website opened the window for uploading the bills only in October - three months behind schedule and on December 6, it suspended the operations citing technical issues. Official sources attribute the glitch to a delay in the State government paying up its due to the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which manages the website.
Failed to respond
“The agreement between NIC and the government expired in November and the government has failed to respond to the NIC’s requests for paying up the dues and issuing a new contract in a timely manner. Consequently, they have stopped the service,” explained an official with the Rubber Board.
The farmers, meanwhile appear a worried lot as it has been almost a month since the website suspended its operation. They fear that this abrupt closure was not a mere technical glitch, but a calculated attempt to sabotage the scheme that provides them with a safety net, ensuring a minimum price for their rubber produce.
“The website was open for just 40 days and the suspension came even as majority of the small-scale growers were about to upload their claims. Over three lakh bills are estimated to be pending for clearance at the different RPS units,’’ explained Babu Joseph, the general secretary of the National Consortium of Rubber Producers’ Societies (NCRPS), a collective representing farmers.
Abrupt suspension
During the previous scheme period, a total of 8.17 lakh bills were forwarded to State government by the board. This time, however, just over 32,000 bills could be cleared till the abrupt suspension of the website’s operation.
The latest development comes close on the heels of farmers expressing their concerns regarding the delay in uploading their bills owing to a shortage of staff in the Rubber Board’s field offices.
Under the RPIS scheme, the government provides farmers with the difference between ₹170, which is the guaranteed price, and the price published by the Rubber Board for one kilogram of sheet rubber and latex. To claim the subsidy, farmers must submit bills from rubber dealers to the RPS in their respective areas. Once verified by the field officers of the Rubber Board, the RPS authorities upload these bills to the State government’s website and amount is credited directly to the bank accounts of growers.
