Pawar denies to expand farmer loan waiver scheme

“Let us first implement the farm loan waiver scheme presented in the Budget and see the results," said Union Agricultural Minister Sharad Pawar on Monday in the parliament. He was responding over the general secretary of All India National Congress and Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi’s statement to expand the farmer loan write off scheme to cover more farmers across the country.

Rahul Gandhi had cited this statement in the Lok Sabha a month before while delivering his speech in the budget session last month.

“We are not in a position to take new responsibilities till the present commitments are implemented,” said Pawar during Question Hour period in the Lok Sabha on April 21, 2008.

‘It will be a very tough job to implement this farmer loan waiver scheme in its decided schedule’ as Pawar stated. The Finance Minister P Chidambaram has presented this scheme in the budget for 2008-09 and pledged to implement this scheme by the end of this June. For this, government has already sanctioned the first installment of Rs.20,000-crore while the total estimated cost of this scheme is Rs. 60,000-crore.

“As much as 81 percent of the total farmers will be covered under this scheme,” added Pawar. However, this loan waiver scheme will not entertain to those farmers who have borrowed the loans from the private lenders because there were no records of that loan in government’s account.

According to this scheme, “The three-crore marginal (having up to one hectare of farm land) and small farmers (owning between 1-2 hectares of farm land) who had credited the loan from public sector banks, co-operative societies, regional rural banks and commercial banks till December 31, 2007 and those remained unpaid till February 29, 2008 would need not to repay their debts, while remaining one-crore other farmers will get the benefit of 25% rebate of their overall debts under one-time-settlement OTS scheme.” The OTS scheme means, farmers will have to repay the debt in a single down payment.

For the banks that had distributed this loan will get financial support from government as per entitled scheme.

“All eligible farmers in the country are entitled to it. However, category-wise and state-wise details in this regard will be available with the government after implementation of the scheme,” said Pawar describing about this scheme.

On the other hand, appealing to government congress MP Rahul Gandhi has asked the government to extend the timing and limit of this scheme as well as also to redefine the marginal and small farmers’ definition.

“Only on the basis of farm land, the ‘marginal’ and ‘small’ farmers should not be decided while the land productivity, crop patterns, irrigation arrangement, environment and local conditions should also be measured while defining farmer’s definition under this scheme.”

However, Sharad Pawar denied to rule out of this measurement.

Meanwhile, the opposition parties led by Bhartiya Janta Party has criticised the government by accusing it, “the UPA government has tried to woo the broad vote bank of farmers in the election year by providing improper loan waiver scheme.”

“This scheme is not sufficient and would not be able to support the families of Maharashtra’s and Andhra’s farmer who had committed suicide due to worse crop and heavy loans.” added opposition in criticism.

“The government should heal them separately.” demanded BJP leaders.