Press Trust of India / New Delhi Feb 26, 2009, 14:35 IST
The government today said there was no proposal to waive loans of the landless, but schemes are in place to help them get out of the clutches of money-lenders.
Responding to a supplementary during Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pawan Kumar Bansal said there was no proposal to waive loans of the landless. But there are several schemes for them, he added.
Indian Banks Association have asked its members to provide loans to the landless so that they can pay back the money-lenders, the Minister said.
Bansal also said the government has been receiving demand for raising the 5-acre limit for farmers' debt waiver scheme. But somewhere there would have to be a cut-off line, he added.
Sivanand Tiwari (JD-U) said majority of the farmers in Vidarbha region, which has been granted special package after farmer suicides, have not availed the benefits of debt waiver.
Only 16,000 farmers in Vidarbha have less than five acres of land while there are 40,000 growers in the region, he said.
Bansal said the Centre has waived loans to the tune of Rs 8,951 crore benefiting 42.48 lakh farmers in Maharashtra. There are 3.68 crore farmers across the country who have benefitted from the debt waiver scheme announced last year, he added.
The Government announced the very ambitious Debt Relief scheme for farmers in Budget 2008-09. But despite the scheme, some 1,154 farmers have committed suicide in Vidarbha alone. The only result of debt waiver scheme is cleansing the balance sheets of the banks at the cost of the taxpayer. Of course it makes farmers eligible for fresh loans, but no fresh loans seem to have been given from this Rs.65,000 crore during khariff season thus defeating the very purpose of loan waiver scheme.Dry land farmers also did not get much benefit as there is no differential definition for eligibility under the scheme for dry land crops. Hence the number of farmers who did not benefit from the scheme, though deserving being placed in similar circumstances, is more than those who got the benefit.
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