Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar with Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyawardhan Rathore met farmers in village Biccholi.
Ahead of the Union Budget, ministers from PM Narendra Modi's government have been asked to go into the field and get a feedback from the people on what they want in the budget.
This exercise will be undertaken in 124 Lok Sabha constituencies in the month of January by Union Ministers.
On Saturday, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyawardhan Rathore who is also a lawmaker from Jaipur rural, and Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar met farmers in village Biccholi, about 50 kilometres from Jaipur and asked them what they wanted from the PM Modi government's second annual budget.
The ministers listened as farmers brought up issues that ailed them and made requests. The list included farmer suicides, crop insurance and minimum support price for vegetables.
"Over four lakh farmers have committed suicide till now. Why is that happening? Because agriculture is becoming totally unprofitable and when farmers run out of all options to make ends meet, they give up in despair," said 62-year-old Ranjit Suleth.
Others like 65-year-old Choga Lal said there was an urgent need to tweak the current crop insurance scheme.
"Right now a farmer only gets crop insurance for crop loss if all crop in his area or tehsil are destroyed. That's like saying if one person has insured himself for an accident, he will not get insurance unless the entire family has an accident. What's the logic of crop insurance based on crops destroyed in the entire area?" he said.
Agreeing with their suggestions, Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar said, "We have taken down their suggestions and divided them into what the state government needs to look at and what the Centre needs to focus on. As far as crop insurance is concerned, I think their issue will be sorted out as the cabinet has also taken up the issue of crop insurance."
Rajyawardhan Rathore, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting said, "An exercise like this will be done in 124 constituencies by all ministers in the month of January. It will give us a large treasure of ideas from the grassroots ahead of the Budget."