Bangalore April 1: The state government does not want to be wedded to the bullock cart age. It also figured out that trying to distribute either bullocks or carts can turn out to be an absurd exercise. If the second turns out to be of abysmal quality, the first is found wanting in number.

The government would rather encourage farmers to use tractors and power tillers, just as it wants the rest to go the techie way.

Therefore, it did not come as a surprise when governor Rameshwar Thakur's state executive committee (SEC) shelved the cart-and-bullock scheme, conceived by the Kumaraswamy's government two years ago.

The SEC in its recent meeting scrapped the scheme because the idea of distributing bullock carts seemed flawed. 'Giving subsidy only for bullocks or only for carts defied logic as marginal farmers would like to have both at any given point of time," agriculture department sources said.

The scheme, titled Bhagyada Bandi-Yatthu Yojane, envisaged a 50% subsidy to small and marginal farmers, which was limited to Rs 10,000 for a pair of bullocks or a bullock cart. An allocation of Rs 20 crore was made to benefit 20,000 farmers.

The government first set up local committees headed by jurisdictional MLAs to identify beneficiaries. The scheme failed to roll along as coalition partners indulged in mudslinging. What followed was delay and corruption.

The amount of Rs 10,000 was too low for building a quality cart. Since farmers were not willing to shell out more from their pockets, carpenters supplied carts made out of sub-standard wood to zilla panchayats, which were nodal agencies for distributing carts to the identified beneficiaries. The poor quality of carts triggered off a controversy.

Despite these drawbacks, the government chose to go ahead and identified 10,848 beneficiaries for bullocks and 7,801 for carts. 'In the open market, a quality wooden-wheel cart is priced between Rs 16,000 and 18,000 and a rubber-tyres fitted cart Rs 25,000-28,000. Farmers at several places obtained the subsidy by showing bullocks they already owned. In some regions, carts that were rolled out developed cracks due to poor quality," sources said.

Taking note of the shortcomings, the government altered the scheme by stopping cart-distribution in mid-2007, but decided to go ahead with the distribution of bullocks. It planned to distribute 50,000 bullocks per year to farmers and earmarked Rs 50 crore for the scheme.

Now, funds earmarked for the scheme have been diverted towards mechanisation of agriculture. 'There were not enough bullocks in the state for the scheme to be carried forward. So it has been discontinued," sources maintained.

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