Indian Express: Mumbai: Friday, 12 February 2016.
FOURTEEN months after Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis rolled out his government’s initiative to write off amounts borrowed by drought-hit farmers from private money lenders, official statistics reveal it might end up benefitting just about six percent of those affected.
Official papers obtained by the Congress party under the Right to Information (RTI) Act reveal that the BJP government has accepted proposals for writing off loans taken by 31,357 farmers hailing from Vidarbha and Marathwada.
In December 2014, while announcing the initiative on the floor of the state Legislative Assembly, the chief minister had informed that about 5 lakh farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada were debt-ridden. The announcement was a part of a special package by the government in drought-hit areas.
The Congress, which released the RTI papers on Thursday, went after the chief minister while criticising the government’s apathy towards the drought crisis and rising cases of farmer suicides.
“The chief minister had endorsed the loan waiver from private money lenders as a big initiative to curb farmer suicides even as the Congress party kept insisting on a full loan waiver to overcome the distress. The official statistics that we have now further expose the government’s apathy towards tackling the agrarian crisis,” said Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant, who had filed the RTI.
“At the time of launching the initiative, the CM had reasoned that 40-45 per cent of farmer suicides were triggered due to loan distress. But the government appears to have failed to even address this distress,” Sawant said.
With the BJP’s popularity in rural areas on the decline, the Congress has been increasingly using the agrarian crisis to paint the current regime’s image as “anti-farmer” and “anti-poor”.
Thursday too saw the Congress party read out from the official papers to project how the amount allocated to write off loans from money lenders had been brought down.
The chief minister had announced that the government will bear the burden of agricultural loans taken by drought-hit farmers from authorised money lenders. While on the floor of the House, Fadnavis had declared that his government had decided to set aside Rs 373 crore towards the write-off, Sawant alleged on Thursday that the Maharashtra Cooperatives Department had initially readied a proposal for Rs 677 crore.
“Riders were introduced to bring down the number of eligible beneficiaries,” Sawant alleged. He also said that the government had so far made budgetary provisions for Rs 277 crore.
The Congress has also said that the list of beneficiaries was further brought down through a three-tier screening mechanism .The government has so far distributed Rs 30 crore towards the loan write-off covering around 17,000 cases.
Meanwhile, the NCP also fired a barb at Fadnavis over the farmer suicide crisis. “When Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorses Fadnavis’s Make in Maharashtra initiative later this week, we would like the CM to discuss with him farmer deaths in the state as well. The government has done little so far to curb the agrarian crisis,” said NCP legislator Dhananjay Munde, leader of opposition in the state legislative council.
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