According to Jagran report, many farmers in the state of Madhya Pradesh have complained that instead of the entire loan waiver, they are getting a waiver of just Rs. 25 and Rs. 300. In the run-up to the election, the Congress party had promised a full loan waiver but after securing the mandate, it seems to have betrayed the people of the state.
On Wednesday, the state government issued a list of farmers whose debt had been waived off under ‘Jai Kishan’ loan waiver scheme. After the list was out, Prakash, a farmer from Jaitpur, claimed that he got a waiver of Rs. 25 only against a total sum of 2.5 lakh. In a similar manner, another farmer of Sikandarpura, Amit said that he got a waiver of Rs. 300 against a sum of 30 thousand rupees.
Moreover, in order to avoid the inconvenience, farmers need to mobilize the loan amount themselves; so that they can further get loans from the banks. According to the Department of Agriculture, there are around 2, 57,600 potential farmers who are eligible for the loan waiver scheme. The report further suggested that out of these farmers; around 1.5 lakh farmers took loans from Cooperative banks while 20,600 farmers took loans from nationalized banks.
This incident underlines the hasty implementation of the farmer loan waiver scheme. Although the state government under Kamal Nath implemented the loan waiver scheme, it has a lot of strings attached. The terms and conditions of the loan waiver scheme led to the exclusion of around 1-lakh odd farmers from getting the benefit. The order states that there is an upper ceiling for the outstanding amount to be waived off which is of Rs. 2 lakhs. This means that any farmer having a loan amount of more than 2 lakhs will hardly get any benefit of the loan-waiver. Besides that, Kamal Nath in his order of loan waiver stated that only short-term loans would be waived off despite the fact that most of the farm loans are of either long or medium terms. In a very short while after its implementation, the scheme has faced a pile of problems so far. Initially, a large number of farmers were excluded from the scheme, and then dead or non-existent farmers were added in the list and now the debt of Rs 25 and 300 got waived off; it seems that the scheme has gone through all the ‘stages’ of implementations to be a “legendary scheme”.
Further, according to media reports, a farmer of Khandwa district in Madhya Pradesh committed suicide after he failed to qualify for the loan waiver scheme announced by the Kamal Nath’s government in Madhya Pradesh.
The promise of a farm loan waiver can be cited as a good example of how Congress makes populist promises despite being aware of the nuances of it. The loan waiver scheme is turning out to be less about helping farmers and more about a gimmick for 2019 polls.