Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh is literally on fire. A day after six farmers were killed in police action agitators damaged railway tracks and torched vehicles. Farmers in MP, which ironically has the best agricultural record, are demanding an UP-type waiver of loans. Farmers in Maharashtra are also demanding the same treatment and the Devendra Fadnavis government finds itself in a corner as its junior partner, the Shiv Sena, has threatened to withdraw support. In Punjab, 40 per cent of the farmers have defaulted on repayment of loans totaling Rs 7,500 crore because of a promise made by Chief Minister Amarindar Singh prior to the polls to waive loans. The 41-day protest by farmers from Tamil Nadu at Jantar Mantar in Delhi prompted the Madras High Court to direct the State to write off loans worth Rs 40,000 crore.
The dominos are falling and what seemed like a winner in UP has come back to haunt BJP run states. Finding the money to pay for this kind of extravagance is an uphill task. Bankers point out that any move to waive loans will raise the prospect of default in the future because farmers will once again wait for a waiver. The point of view is thrashed by Leftists who argue that if industry can be allowed to get away with bad loans, why should farmers be treated differently? Think about this: if Vijay Mallya were to pay back all the money he owned to banks, it would be enough to write off nearly 20 per cent of the loans of all Tamil Nadu farmers.
The fact is, nearly 55 percent of the total work force is employed in agriculture and its contribution to the GDP is a meagre 17 per cent. The Modi government had promised to double farmers’ incomes by 2022, but for this to happen agriculture will have to register a growth rate of 14 per cent. In reality, it is growing at the rate of 1.2 per cent.
Farmers are under stress. In the last two decades about 3.18 lakh farmers committed suicide, a clear indication that something is not okay with the policies of the Union and State governments. There are several problems “ fragmentation of land, archaic land laws, lack of irrigation, overuse of bore wells, markets that do not function in tandem with farmers needs, paucity of cold chains… The list is a long one. All these problems are not going to go away without active government intervention. In the absence of a safety net to protect farmers from crop failures, loan waivers are required. If industrial loans can be restructured and written off, the same can be done for farmers. The writing on the wall is clear, India may be shining, Bharat is not. Something needs to be done to relieve farmers of stress and reshape agriculture policy to suit them.
