Bailout for Indian farmers

By Aditya Mhatre at 31 December, 2008, 2:32 am

The new CM of Maharashtra announced a special new year’s gift for the farmers in Maharashtra. Under the new package, irrespective of the economic conditions and land holdings, farmers would get a loan waiver of Rs. 20000. According to Chavan, the loan which would cost the Maharashtra government Rs 6,208 crores would benefit around 40 lakh farmers and would result in a complete loan waiver for around 23 lakh farmers (wow!).

While, it might seem to be a good move to help 23 lakh farmer get rid of their loans, I think government should also consider creating infrastructure and ensuring that this does not happen again.

The earlier loan waiver of Rs 7,871 crores from central government provided relief to around 38 lakh farmers in Maharashtra. The above scheme is expected to be complete before March end and I am pretty sure that the scheme will be executed to perfection since the General Elections are due in May 2009! To take a cynical view this seems to be another way into vote bank politics.

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Categories : Politics & Society