Chandigarh: Expressing serious concern over the deteriorating condition of the farmers and unabated farmer suicides, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has once again urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to announce a one-time debt relief to ameliorate the miseries of the farming community.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister has sought immediate intervention of the Centre 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, he said.
With continued debt stress, the number of farmers' suicides is increasing and there is widespread resentment amongst them, said Singh, stressing the need for immediate attention to the issue by the central government.
He has requested that the issue of agriculture loan waiver at national level be considered on priority to make 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 2 lakh to all the marginal and small farmers. So far, an amount of Rs 999 crore has been disbursed as relief to about 2 lakh farmers, he added.
The initiative, wrote Captain 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.
Citing the contribution of the farmers of Punjab to National Food Security, the Chief Minister said 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.
The Chief Minister further cited the climatic aberrations of the last three-four years as cause of further aggravation of the farmers' economic condition. Due to drought during kharif 2014, the farmers had to incur an additional expenditure to raise their paddy crop. The untimely rains during rabi 2014-15 seriously impacted the productivity of wheat and the farmers suffered a yield loss of 10-15%, he said.
Again, during 2015 kharif season, the cotton crop was devastated by attack of white fly and the potato, sugarcane and basmati growers were affected by the low market prices, Captain Amarinder pointed out.
Captain Amarinder said the increase in MSP 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 Centre 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 Chief Minister pointed out.
As a result, he said, the outstanding advance of the banks towards the Punjab farmers, as on March 31 last year had increased to about Rs 72,771 crore, which was more than the State's GDP from agriculture.
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