New Delhi, March 15
The government may be in a self-congratulatory mode on the introduction of the Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver scheme for farmers. However, hundreds of farmers from Punjab, camping at Jantar Mantar in the Capital for past four days now, says that the Budget 2008-09 has done little to solve their problems as the loan waiver scheme will benefit less than 1 per cent of farmers from the state.
Stressing that conditions of loan waiver were against the farmers of Punjab, they are demanding a “scientific” pricing for their produce by the way of a more realistic MSP and amendment in terms of reference of the CACP.
“There has been a continuous squeeze over real margin of profit of farmers for more than two decades. Now we want our right. We are not here to look for some pity or favour,” they say.
The farmers are sure that they will not go back unless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself comes out of his office, receives their memorandum and talks to them about problems being faced by the biggest contributors to graneries of the country.
“Punjab contributes 60 per cent of wheat and 48 per cent rice to the nation's kitty. But the fact is that not even 1 per cent of farmers from Punjab will gain from this so-called loan waiver. Which is why we are not interested in depositing our memorandum at the window of the Prime Minister’s office. We have done that several times in the past but now we want to meet him. We are not some Maoists or naxals that the Prime Minister cannot come out
of his SPG protection and listen to our problems,” says Bharti Kisan Union (Punjab) president Balbir Singh Rajewal.
Rajewal and his colleagues Onkar Singh Agaul and Ranjit Singh Pannu say that loans outstanding against farmers are the result of wrong pricing of the MSP as the support price of wheat should be at least Rs 1,720 per quintal. This point of view is seconded by all farmers camping at the site.
As far as getting the benefit of the loan waiver is concerned, farmers also say that there will hardly be any defaulters in Punjab on paper as a majority of them settle their short-term crop loans on a regular basis. “Punjab’s cooperative agriculture recovery is at the top. Maybe there are some bogus names or chronic defaulters in the defaulters’ lists,” Rajewal says, adding that the loan waiver will just help banks clear their balance sheets.
Not just this, Rajewal says that the five-acre land ceiling for loan waiver will also go against farmers of the state because the reality is that while 72 per cent of farmers have landholdings below 5 acres, on record their number is very less.
