Haryana rolls out initiatives for farmers

After weather hits rabi crops, govt aid for kharif season

With untimely rain and hailstorm causing large-scale damage to rabi crops in Haryana, the government has rolled out initiatives to help farmers take loans and buy inputs for the kharif season.

The damage to crops is likely to affect the repaying capacity of the farmers.

Banks have a total outstanding of Rs 28,559 crore in crop loans as on December 31, 2014, for 2,28,760 farmers in Haryana. They have been told by P K Das, principal secretary, to follow the revised guidelines issued on March 25 by the Reserve Bank of India to provide various relief measures to the farmers.

Haryana has set April 15 as the deadline to complete the field-level assessment of crop loss. A preliminary report released on March 22 assessed the tentative loss at Rs 1,137 crore.

Wheat, a major rabi crop, has suffered extensive damage. Damage has also been recorded for other rabi crops such as mustard and horticulture.

Addressing bankers, Das said: The loss can be as high as 15 to 20 per cent of the total produce. He advised them to go easy on the farmers by extending interest subvention, moratorium of 24 months, restructure crop loans and extend repayment periods.

According to National Crime Record Bureau, Haryana registered 374 farmers suicide in 2013, against 83 in neighbouring Punjab. An estimated 70 per cent farmers have an access to the institutional finance and the state has the target of reaching 95 per cent of the farmers in the next two to three years. Many farmers, unable to repay their debt, resort to suicide.

Bankers have agreed to double the consumption loan from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 to meet the needs of the farmers in the wake of crop loss.

Haryana had estimated to produce 11.4 million tonnes of wheat in 2014-15. The revised projection is 9.5 million tonnes.

The state is also a major contributor to the central pool it contributed 6.4 million tonnes last year and was supposed to supply seven million tonnes this year.

The harvesting for the next season has already been delayed by two to three weeks due to continuous wet spells.

The state has a corpus of Rs 2,000 crore in its disaster relief fund and an approval from the Centre, after final assessment, to distribute the compensation to the farmers, if required.

The compensation would be awarded within 30 days of the receipt of the report, said Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in a media interaction on Monday.