India faces Rs 3 lakh cr farm loan waivers-16 times 2017 rural roads budget

loan waivers have led to a rise in non-performing assets of banks, especially public-sector banks

As demands for farm-loan waivers grow across Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka–after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra wrote off loans worth Rs 36,359 crore and Rs 30,000 crore respectively–India faces a cumulative loan waiver of Rs 3.1 lakh crore ($49.1 billion), or 2.6% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016-17.

A waiver of this scale could pay for the 2017 rural roads budget 16 times over or pay for 443,000 warehouses or increase India’s