Thousands of landless farmers, agriculture labourers, tenant farmers and women in Amaravathi are slowly turning beggars, thanks to TDP president and AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu.
Naidu acquired 33,000 acres of fertile agriculture land in 39 villages for construction of AP's new capital Amaravathi city.
While Kamma landlords benefitted with land acquisition due to realty boom, the landless farmers, tenant farmers and women, who used to work in these agriculture fields all through the year were rendered jobless.
At the time of land acquisition, Naidu promised to give Rs 2,500 pension per month to these landless labourers to compensate for their loss. He named it as 'Amaravathi pension".
Shockingly, the TDP government stopped these pensions for the last five months hitting the livelihood of thousands of families.
While some of these families turned beggars for their livelihood, others migrated to other states and cities in search of work.
Prior to land acquisition for Amaravathi, these landless labourers used to earn up to Rs 10,000 per month due to agricultural work in these 39 villages.
Naidu promised to give Rs 2,500 per month "Amaravathi pension", for 10 years as part of Land Pooling Scheme for Amaravathi, which is much less than Rs 8,476 that the recommendation made by the World Bank.
Amaravathi pension remained the only source of income for these families for the past three years and this too was stopped for the past five months.
School dropout children have increased with parents unable to bear education costs with no work in Amaravathi.
