As loan waiver gets official, little cheer in suicide zone

In the heart of Vidharbha’s suicide country, Sumitra Pandurang Surpam and Asha Lakde have similar stories to tell. Their husbands committed suicide early this year after crops failed and debts mounted. Sumitra is not eligible for the loan waiver while Asha is but it is not making much of a difference to either.

Sumitra, 40, has little idea about the buzz of karjamafi (loan-waiver) that is all around her. The day after the government’s deadline to banks to waive off nearly Rs 71,000 crore loans to small and marginal farmers across India ended, she knows it does not benefit her but she is not bothered.

Luck has hardly been on her side ever since her husband Pandurang consumed poison on April 1, 2008. Sumitra, a Kolam tribal, had no courage to do farming after having seen her husband’s disastrous experience. So, she left her Kochi village to shift to stay in her parents’ house in Wagda village, about 13 km away. “I did not want to stay on in that village any longer, neither did my children. So rather than till my own land, I chose to be a labourer,” she says.

From the three non-irrigated acres they have at Kochi village in Ghatanji tehsil, Pandurang could reap just four quintal of cotton and 50 kg of pulses last year. With an institutional loan of Rs 25,000, taken after the eligibility deadline of March 31, 2007, and a private loan worth about 30,000, he had lost the will and the courage to live.

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Budget set to waive small, marginal farmer loans

Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in his 2008-09 Budget, is set to announce a complete waiver of loans owed by small and marginal farmers, an enhanced subsidy on fertilisers and full reimbursement of actual freight incurred in moving fertilisers.

The write-off of loans owed by the small and marginal farmers - with landholding below 5 acres - and the interest thereon, is a one-time concession. For those with bigger landholding, the remaining 20 percent of the farm community, the relief would be partial providing for a 25-percent rebate on outstanding dues, provided they pay off the 75 percent over three years beginning next fiscal year.

Sources said that about Rs 50,000 crore would be earmarked for the write-off with pro visions made out of the budget without any additional less on the taxpayers.


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