Expressing serious concern over the deteriorating condition of the farmers and the unabated farmer suicides, Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh has once again urged Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi to announce one-time debt relief to ameliorate the miseries of the farming community.
In a letter to the PM, the CM sought immediate intervention of the Union government to avoid any socio-economic unrest in the rural areas.
With continued debt stress, the number of farmers’ suicides is increasing and there is widespread resentment amongst them, said the CM, stressing the need for immediate attention to the issue by the Central government.
Amarinder has requested that the issue of agriculture loan waiver at national level be considered on priority, to reduce the miseries of farmers. The CM pointed out that the state government, on its part, had decided to provide an institutional loan waiver of Rs 2 lakh to all the marginal and small farmers.
This, he said, would provide a relief of total debt waiver of approximately Rs 9500 Crore to 8.75 lakh farmers having about 10.21 lakh crop loan accounts.
The initiative, wrote Amarinder, will contribute a bit in checking the distress, but to help in putting agriculture sector on a path of high trajectory growth and development with an assurance of better quality living for the farmers of our country, a one-time agriculture debt waiver for farmers at the national level was essential.
The CM further said besides the climatic aberrations of the last three-four years, the increase in Minimum Support Price during this period had also not kept pace with increase in cost of agricultural inputs.
Consequently, the debt burden of the farmers had gone up manifold and the economic distress was manifesting in terms of their suicides, he added.
Though the Government of India had started a well-intentioned programme to double the flow of institutional credit to agriculture in three years in 2003-04, in the process of meeting the targets, the bankers made a liberal lending, sometimes even ignoring the economic viability and banking ethics, the CM pointed out.
As a result, he said, the outstanding advance of the banks towards the Punjab farmers, as on 31-03-2017, had increased to about R.72771 Crore, which was more than the state’s Gross Domestic Product from agriculture.