Maharashtra farmers drive a hard bargain, forcing the Devendra Fadnavis government to concede their demand for farm loan waiver.
Not since the Shetkari Sanghatana's agitation in 1982 for remunerative prices for primary milk producers in Maharashtra has there been a united farmers’ action on the scale that the State witnessed in early June. So when the Devendra Fadnavis government conceded the farmers’ demand for a waiver of farm loans on June 11, it was a vindication of their just demands.
Numbering about 1.37 crore, farmers are possibly the largest single group of toilers in Maharashtra and yet they have none of the clout that would normally be associated with such numbers. Instead, they are among groups that are the most invisible and thus the most exploited by the state. The worst affected are those who own less than two hectares of land; they constitute about 78 per cent of the farming community. These small and marginal farmers practise rain-fed agriculture since the majority of the irrigated land inMaharashtra is ownedby big and corporate farmers. Already caught in a debt trap, these farmers are unable to borrow from cooperative societies as the cooperative banks that lend money to these societies are bankrupt, the political powers that control them having siphoned off the money.
Although small farmers are eligible for crop loans, they do not get loans for agricultural infrastructure. One farmer summed up their plight thus: the bank would refuse to provide a loan to dig a well because there is no guarantee that it can reclaim the well, whereas it would give a loan to buy a motorcycle.
The economist and former State Planning Commission member Professor H.N. Desarda said: “There is a subterfuge here. To be eligible to borrow you have to pay back, but obviously the farmer cannot pay back. So he borrows from moneylenders so as to be eligible to get bank loans.”
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