Before 2019, the man who woke at 4 a.m., walked miles to someone else’s field, bent his back under the blazing sun, and fed a family of six from one season’s harvest was invisible to the government of Andhra Pradesh. He was a tenant farmer, a landless labourer – not worthy of subsidies, not eligible for insurance, not even counted as a “real” farmer. When drought struck or floods came, he borrowed from the moneylender at 60 percent interest and prayed for the next crop.
Then YSRCP came to power, and everything changed. Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy looked at these forgotten men and women and said something revolutionary: “The person who tills the soil is the farmer – whether the land is in his name or not.”
YSR Rythu Bharosa was born. ₹13,500 every year flowed directly into the bank accounts of tenant farmers and landless cultivators – the same amount as big landowners received. For the first time in 75 years of independence, the government recognized the real annadata. Money reached without middlemen, without corruption, without having to touch anyone’s feet. A farmer from Kurnool still remembers opening his passbook and seeing the first ₹13,500. “I thought it was a mistake,” he says. “When I realised it was real, I sat under the neem tree and wept.”
Free Crop Insurance – Relief When Disaster Struck
Crop insurance had been a cruel joke for decades. Farmers paid premiums year after year, only to discover that the government had not paid its share to the insurance companies. When the crop failed, the companies simply said, “No claim.” Lakhs of rupees vanished into thin air.
YSRCP ended that betrayal overnight. Crop insurance became completely free for farmers. Not a single rupee was deducted from their pockets. And when nature turned cruel – when cyclones battered the coast, when floods swallowed fields, when drought turned green lands brown – the compensation came swiftly and silently.
₹7,800 crore reached the accounts of 85 lakh farmer families. No protests needed. No dharnas. No collector’s darbar. Just an SMS: “Your crop loss compensation has been credited.”
A woman from West Godavari still shows visitors the message she received after Cyclone Michaung: ₹1,42,000 credited. “Under previous governments, we would still be fighting in court,” she says.
Calamity After Calamity – A Government That Stood Like Family
Cyclone Nivar. Cyclone Titli. Cyclone Fani. Floods in Krishna. Drought in Anantapur. Year after year, nature tested Andhra Pradesh’s farmers.
Every single time, YSRCP was there before the waters receded. Teams reached villages the same day. Enumeration began while the mud was still wet. Money landed in bank accounts within days. Farmers who had lost everything received their relief while their homes were still flooded.
No committees delayed decisions. No files gathered dust. No politics came in the way. The government behaved like family – not a distant relative who visits only during elections.
The Bitter Contrast: TDP’s Broken Promises
While YSRCP delivered silently, the TDP years left scars that farmers still feel today.
Crop insurance premiums remained unpaid for years, leaving farmers helpless when their fields were destroyed. Five lakh farmers are still waiting for ₹600 crore in input subsidies that were announced with fanfare but never released. Loan waiver became a cruel election gimmick – most farmers received nothing, or a few thousand rupees against lakhs promised.
Tenant farmers? Completely ignored, treated as if they did not exist. Relief after cyclones? It came after months of protests, sometimes years of litigation, always wrapped in red tape and politics.
Farmers were reduced to vote banks, not annadatas. They were not partners in progress; they were just numbers in electoral spreadsheets.
A Chief Minister Who Understood the Soil
YS Jagan Mohan Reddy never saw agriculture as just another department in the secretariat. He saw it as the soul of Andhra Pradesh. He saw farmers as family.
He grew up watching his father, Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy, walk barefoot through paddy fields, hold the calloused hands of farmers, and wipe their tears when crops failed. Jagan carried that legacy forward – not with speeches, but with decisions that reached the last acre, the last sickle, the last drop of sweat.
From Amaravati’s Secretariat to Anantapur’s drought-hit hamlets, everyone understood one truth: if the farmer smiles, Andhra smiles.
The Legacy That No Election Can Erase
Even today, long after the government changed, farmers speak of those five years differently. They speak of them with folded hands, moist eyes, and quiet gratitude.
They remember the money that came without asking. The insurance that worked when it mattered most. The relief that arrived before the pain could settle.
They remember a time when, for the first time in their lives, someone in power actually saw them. Not as voters. Not as statistics. But as the backbone of the state, as the people who feed millions while struggling to feed their own families.
YSRCP didn’t just govern Andhra Pradesh from 2019 to 2024. It gave its farmers back their dignity, their security, and their fearlessness.
And that is why, when a farmer in a remote village of Srikakulam or Prakasam district speaks of Jagananna, his voice softens and he says: “Jagananna vasthe manaku bhayam ledhu.” When Jagananna was there, we had nothing to fear.
Because for five brief, beautiful years, the annadata knew that someone in Amaravati was awake, watching over him. Someone cared.
That is a legacy that no political change can touch. That is a love that no election result can wash away.
