The Horticulture department’s prime motto is farmers welfare, self employment generation and women empowerment, says Dr. Md. Iqbal Baba, Chief Horticulture Officer, Budgam. We created a water source for the farmers as they did not have the water facility for irrigation, and they needed to sprinkle medicine in the fields. There are two schemes. PMDP- Prime Minister’s Development Package is a centrally sponsored scheme. Around 90,000 farmers get subsidies. Ninety percent is the Centre share and 10 per cent is the State share. They get Rs 81000 as Central share and Rs 9000 as State share. The other scheme is a UT sponsored scheme. Under Capex, budget allotment takes place and we give 90,000 subsidy for borewells. The benefit is: production increases when timely spray and irrigation happens.The quality of production improves and farmers’ income doubles. Earlier, we used to face difficulties having to travel 3 to 10 km to get water for irrigation, says Shaukat Ali Mir, a farmer of Budgam. The water we used was disease ridden. Now, with the borewell, first of all, the disease factor has gone away. The farmers are happy with the district zone, government and administration that a lot of their problems have been cleared with the installation of the borewell.