THE expanded farm debt waiver plan cleared by the Union Cabinet on Friday is unlikely to bring cheer to the farmers in Vidarbha, the ground zero of agrarian crisis in the state. Farm activists and NGOs working in Vidarbha, as also some ministers in the Congress-NCP government, continue to doubt the efficacy of the debt waiver plan even after the Centre increased the size of the farm package by nearly 20%. Though nine out of the 11 districts of Vidarbha have been covered under the new package, the Centre's insistence on the one-size-fits-all formula may continue to deprive many Vidarbha farmers of any relief. Activists and NGOs maintain that region-specific changes in the Rs 71,600-crore farm package would have been far more effective than merely applying a broad criteria for all states. In the arid regions of Vidarbha, large landholding has much less value as compared to irrigated regions, where small landholding fetches higher returns. "Farm landholding across India differs from region to region. Some regions like Vidarbha have more number of farmers holding more than five acres of land. But elsewhere in Maharashtra, like Western Maharashtra and Northern Maharashtra where horticulture is practiced, average land holding is less than five acres. So, there cannot be a uniform formula for indebted farmers in all regions,' said Vidarbha-based farm activist Vijay Jawandhiya. Mr Jawandhiya has been demanding monetary ceiling as the main eligibility parameter for the debt waiver instead of landholding. "The government needs to put a monetary cap instead. For instance, it could write off outstanding loans of up to Rs 50,000 per head in Vidarbha for all farmers, irrespective of their landholding. This formula would help farmers in other dry-land regions like Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh and also other regions where average landholding is more than five acres,' Mr Jawandhiya said. Kishore Tiwari of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti said a blanket loan waiver, irrespective of the landholding pattern or outstanding dues, would do real good to farmers in all states. "If indebtedness is taken as one of the root causes for the farm crisis, then the government must address it in a holistic manner instead of setting different slabs for different farmers. An indebted farmer holding more than five acres of land is as much in crisis as a marginal farmer,' Mr Tiwari said. A Congress minister from Vidarbha, who did not want to go on record, said region-specific strategies should have been evolved by the Union government before the debt waiver was announced. "The Central government has a pool of experts and government agencies at its command, which could have been used to collect region-specific data. These agencies could have collated data on different landholding patterns in different states, average outstanding loan per head in different regions and their corelation with landholding, crop patterns. These data could have been used to announce region-specific measures in the debt waiver,' the minister told ET.