‘"Getting my loans waived means I can farm again and I can also take another loan,'" said a farmer. 

More than 1,600 farmers have allegedly committed suicide in Vidarbha during the regime of Congress with its allies led
Maharashtra and in the centre. Farmers foundcrop cotton of Rs 300/ after investing Rs. 3000/. They are in debt. A family head did suicide and after that his son studying in the engineering college returned. www.newsanalysisindia.com/125122006.htm 

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“Born in debt, live in debt and die in debt” 

‘"Getting my loans waived means I can farm again and I can also take another loan,'" said a farmer. 

At the time of British rule the government distributed free tea. Thus we got habit to drink tea.http://www.newsanalysisindia.com/103012007.htm 

Like that Govt is making habit of loan taking through the waiving loan. But budget has not any scheme by which farmers would not feel necessity for taking loans again.  

Govt waive the loan, it is O.K. But what Chidambaram’s allocation of fund for the improvement of agriculture and the living standards of the farmers is? 

Chidambaram and his boss PM Great Economist Dr Singh and his boss Sonia Gandhi have no time to find out resons of the alarming rise in farmer borrowings.  

Take an example of borrowing for capital investment (tractor, tubewells, soil conservation etc.) purposes. Worse, depletion of ground water and deteriorating soil quality forces farmers to borrow heavily. Depletion of underground water forces them to deepen tubewells every fifth year. The traditional centrifugal water lifting technology became redundant and was to be replaced by much costly submersible technology. As a result, sunk capital investment multiplied many times. The result: debt accumulation. 

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PIL in the Supreme Court 

As reported in the Economic Times: There is a PIL in the Supreme Court, after the announcement of budget.  PIL by advocate M L Sharma has sought a direction to the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of
India to place the list of banks and the loan amount due to them.

Contending that the write-off is limited to such farmers who have taken loans from the nationalised banks, the PIL sought that loan waiver scheme be extended to all those who have taken loan from private money lenders and private banks.

Further, he said that politicians should be kept out of the distribution of fund under the debt-free scheme.

The advocate contended that there was no such huge amount of farmers" debt with the nationalised banks.

Prior to February 29, 2008, according to RBI, there was no bank having any dead/sick agricultural loan in their balance sheets, the petitioner said.

“During the last five years, several banks like PNB, Dena Bank, UCO Bank, State Bank of
India have already come up in their public issue and none of them had declared having any unrecoverable agricultural loan in their balance sheets," the petition said.

In the absence of any concrete data to determine the exact amount as Rs 60,000 crore total farmers loan, the petitioner said that “it is nothing more than an election fund under the garb of farmers’ loan which is being withdrawn from the treasury by the politicians".  

“Two thirds of the farmers have borrowed money from private money lenders. The bulk of suicides are taking place among them," Communist Party of
India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters in the parliament complex. 

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The waiver of loans taken for farmers with two hectares (or 5 acres) would not add up to much for a cotton grower of Vidarbha who does dry-land farming, since they have to look at other informal means to meet their borrowing needs 

In contrast, the per acre loans available for growers of sugarcane, grapes and horticulture crops will benefit hugely. This is the region of Sharad Pawar and Vilas Rao Deshmukh. So this scheme beneficial of those regions where suicide not happened. Suicides happened in wholesole in the Vidarbha, Chhattiisgarh and like these other provinces. They would not be beneficial of this loan waiver budget."While grape and sugarcane growers will get lakhs of rupees waived in one stroke, the cotton and dry-land farmers will barely get Rs 30,000 waived. So the only way this waiver can work in favour of farmers is to waive up to a certain amount, say Rs 50,000 per farmer, or have different waiver limits for dry land and irrigated land farmers," an activist of Vidarbha said.The waiver won"t help indebted farmers in Chhattisgarh which has been reporting farmer suicides because most of them hold four and five hectares (10 to 12.5 acres). 

Do suicide, then get relief in Budgethttp://www.newsanalysisindia.com/229022008.htm‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ is flowing tears Thousand farmers have been pushed for suicide in ‘Vidarbha and other places. Their families flow tears. Slogan of Lal Babhadur Shastree ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ is flowing tears. Lame duck Puppet PM is nuked, not for rise in prices and suicides?http://www.newsanalysisindia.com/123102007.htm 

By Premendra Agrawal

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