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How will the Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver announced in the Union Budget impact the farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh?
The Tribune team of correspondents report their findings from the field
Beyond
the waiver
The loan waiver will give farmers
respite but only a revamp of the entire agricultural system will
ensure their sustainability, writes Yoginder
Gupta
| Jubilation, confusion,
apprehension, secrecy and disappointment are the emotions which
farmers in Haryana display after Union Finance Minister announced a
scheme to waive off bank loans of small and marginal farmers in his
Budget speech. The farmer is jubilant that he would be free from his
loan burden. He is confused to what extent the government would take
care of his loan burden. He is apprehensive to what extent he would
have to shell out clandestinely to bank and other officials to take
the benefits of the scheme. |
A multi-pronged strategy has to be adopted to uplift marginal and poor farmers. |
“It
rewards defaulters”
Farmers who have paid off
their loans are feeling cheated, writes Shveta
Pathak
from Ludhiana
Cycling
to his farm 55-year-old
Nachhattar Singh smiles to himself thinking of his lush green fields
where wheat gets ready to be harvested next month. A small farmer,
with a five-acre land holding in village Jandiali Khurd in Mandi
Ahmedgarh, he feels content. With an income which in no way is
substantial, he has managed to run his household, never letting anyone
doubt his credibility. He paid off his loans regularly, though not
comfortably. He is joyous at the news of the loan waiver.
No exit
Farmers in Malwa have little to celebrate as they still have to pay back loans to arhtiyas, reports
S.P Sharma from Bathinda
The
Prime Minister’s package
covers only the loans taken from commercial banks and cooperative
institutions. With the highest number of farmers of the Malwa region
in Punjab reeling under debt, the area has hit headlines because of
the high incidence of suicide. Nearly 700 small farmers and
agricultural labourers have reportedly committed suicide in Bathinda,
one of the district of the seven hard-core cotton-growing districts of
the state.
Ready for more
Defaulters are happy that they will now be eligible for fresh loans, reports
Ruchika M. Khanna
The
Rs 60,000-crore largesse
offered by the Union Finance Minister, to the farming community may
not prove to be such a boon after all. Even as farmers are ecstatic
over the loan waiver, a vast majority of farmers in North India, who
have availed loans from private money lenders, do not stand to
benefit.
Scent of an albatross
A
collaborated study led by American and French researchers has found that wandering albatrosses rely heavily on their sense of smell to find food. They found that the birds were capable to pick up the smell of food from several miles.
“This is the first time anyone has looked at the odour-tracking behaviour of individual birds in the wild using remote techniques,” said Gabrielle
Nevitt, study author and professor of neurobiology, physiology and behaviour at UC Davis.
Armed with nostalgia
A number of Indians received their pre-commission training at the Royal Military College Sandhurst in the early 1900s.
Brig M. P. Singh (retd) visits the famous academy in the UK which has artefacts and memorabilia of the British Indian Army
Off the beaten track
The great Indian traveller is seeking out niche experiences,
says V. Vijayalakshmi
Mere
trips to Singapore and
Thailand, or for that matter even to London, Paris and Rome, are no
longer good enough for the great Indian traveller who is now looking
at specialised tours like music cruises, adventure trails, spiritual
getaways and health holidays abroad.
Whither
women’s cinema
There has hardly been
a movement of self-assertion and protest by filmmakers against the way
women are depicted in cinema, writes Derek Bose
Women’s
representation in cinema
has more or less been limited to the way the movie camera
"looks" at the staging of certain stereotypical situations
on screen, such as a rape, the social ostracism faced by an unwed
mother, a cabaret, kathak or item number, an orphan girl trapped in a
den of vice and so on.
Interview
Image
makeover for Bipasha
Setting aside the
micro-minis, Bipasha Basu will be seen in a saree and ethnic jewellery
in Rituparno Ghosh’s film, writes Shoma A.
Chatterji
Bipasha
Basu is a surprise package. Just when everyone is getting ready to see
her shapely self in sizzling style in Race, hotting it up with
Saif Ali Khan, here she goes all sari-bindi-ethnic jewellery for her
first Bangla film, Shawb Choritro Kalponik (All Characters are
Fictitious) being directed by Rituparno Ghosh.
Now Salaam-e-Ishq in 6 stories
Subhash K. Jha
In
what will decidedly
qualify as a first-ever experiment in cinema, Nikhil Advani’s
segmented love saga Salaam-e-Ishq will now be divided into six
separate stories, with each plot treated as an individual,
self-contained film. This more viewer-friendly version of the episodic
film will conclusively illustrate the fact that the fragmented format
doesn’t work in India. Commenting on this, Advani said: "I’d
have to go with that.
A sparkling new look
If you are wearing an off-shoulder dress, you can apply shimmer on the curve of the shoulder, says
Dolly Sagar
Shimmer
and glitter in the make-up
are back with a bang. Every fashion-conscious young girl out there is
vying to get it perfectly right. Turn around and you find that shimmer
cannot go unnoticed. The giggling group of girls in your favourite
fast food joint make sure that you notice it. They lower their eyelids
and you can catch a trace of it.
Touch wood
Students
at North Carolina State University have unveiled a wooden sports car, which can run faster than a Porsche or a Lamborghini, as part of their graduate project. Joe Harmon, head of the project, has revealed that the car has been named Splinter. He says that it can produce 700 bhp from its twin supercharged, 4.6 litre V8 engine, almost 300 bhp more than a Porsche 911 GT3. The car has a top speed of 240 mph, he adds.
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