Farmers’ suicide unabated, Capt seeks farm debt waiver from Centre

Alarmed by the unabated suicides by the farmers putting a question mark on Congress-led Punjab Government’s loan waiver scheme, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday tried to put the ball in the Centre’s court by seeking one-time debt relief.

Capt Amarinder, expressing serious concern over the deteriorating condition of farmers and unabated farmer suicides, reiterated his demand urging the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce one-time debt relief to ameliorate the miseries of the farming community.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, he sought Central Government’s immediate intervention to avoid any socio-economic unrest in the rural areas.

“Despite repeated requests from the state government for a national-level debt waiver scheme for farmers, the response so far has not been encouraging,” said the Chief Minister, urging a one-time relief to ensure that their livelihood is not compromised in any way.

“With continued debt stress, the number of farmers’ suicides is increasing and there is widespread resentment amongst them,” said the Chief Minister, stressing the need for immediate attention to the issue by the Central Government.

Capt Amarinder requested that the issue of agriculture loan waiver at the national level be considered on priority, to reduce the miseries of farmers, thereby making agricultural sector more resilient and the economy more resurgent.

The Chief Minister pointed out that the State Government, on its part, had decided to provide an institutional loan waiver of Rs two lakh to all marginal and small farmers, having availed loan up to Rs  2 lakh, and a relief of Rs  2 lakh to marginal farmers having outstanding loans of more than Rs two lakh.

This would provide a relief of total debt waiver of approximately Rs 9,500 crore to 8.75 lakh farmers having about 10.21 lakh crop loan accounts. So far, an amount of Rs 999.67 crore had been disbursed as relief to about 2.02 lakh farmers, he added.

“The initiative 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 is essential,” he said.

Citing the contribution of Punjab’s farmers to the national food security, Capt Amarinder said that they had raised productivity and production of wheat and rice in a record time during the green revolution, saving the country from hunger and deprivation of a large segment of its population.

He said: “In Punjab, these farmers adopted new technologies supported by appropriate policies and complemented with investments and institutional infrastructure by the State to achieve an all-time high production and productivity of food grains. However, the production potential of the available technology of these crops has now been fully exploited and there is now near stagnation in growth.”

Capt Amarinder also cited climatic aberrations of the past three-four years as cause of further aggravation of the farmers' economic condition.  “Due to drought during kharif 2014, farmers had to incur an additional expenditure to raise their paddy crop. Untimely rains during Rabi 2014-15 seriously impacted wheat productivity and farmers suffered a yield loss of 10-15 percent,” he recalled.

Again during 2015 kharif season, the cotton crop was devastated by attack of whitefly and the potato, sugarcane and basmati growers were affected by the low market prices, he pointed out.

Capt Amarinder said that increase in MSP during this period had also not kept pace with increase in cost of agricultural inputs. Consequently, the farmers’ debt burden had gone up manifold and economic distress was manifesting in terms of their suicides, he added.

In the end, Chief Minister pointed that even as the Centre had started a well-intentioned programme to double the flow of institutional credit to agriculture in three years in 2003-04, the bankers made a liberal lending in the process of meeting the targets sometimes even ignoring the economic viability and banking ethics.

“As a result, the outstanding advance of the banks towards the Punjab farmers, as on March 31, 2017, has increased to about Rs 72,771 crore, which is more than the State's GDP from agriculture,” he pointed.