Do more for farmers
Union finance minister's Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver in the Union Budget proposals has won kudos for the government and has to some extent queered the pitch for the Opposition on this score. But a lot more needs to be done if the Congress-led UPA government has to regain the confidence of farmers. Bank loan is just one minor part of the problem and concerns only those farmers who take loans from banks. There are millions of farmers who take loans from moneylenders and commission agents at usurious prices. Maybe the government could issue an ordinance to stop payment on these loans, because in most cases the interest amount is more than double the actual loan. Even in the case of the farmers whose loans with banks have been waived, fresh trouble will begin next season. The crux of the problem which any farmer from Hoshiarpur to Wardha or Warangal will tell you, is remunerative price. Unless he gets remunerative prices, he will be in debt to the banks again. And what about corruption? A farmer from Hoshiarpur, for instance, if he wants to buy a tractor which costs say Rs 5-6 lakhs, has to pledge his four acres of land in addition to the ten per cent interest he pays on the loan. When he pledges his land he has to deal with the patwari and senior revenue officials. He has to bribe them to get his work done. Then he has to look for a middleman and pay him to negotiate to get his loan from the bank and finally at the bank he has to grease the palms of officials sanctioning the loans. On Rs 4 lakhs he pays over Rs 4,000 as bribe, and this is the minimum. The other important issue is cost of production. The government gives the farmer what it calls his cost of production. Perhaps the bureaucrats use their own parameters to arrive at the cost of production, but the farmer needs to survive. The businessman, for instance, adds his profits and perks to the cost of the items he produces. Shouldn't the farmer get a reasonable profit? He and his family work 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year on their farm. In Maharashtra, farmers wait all night for power to run his pumps. And yet his cost of production does not take all this into account. This bias against the farmer must be removed.
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