Click to play videoBundelkhand: Finance Minister P Chidambaram's Rs 60,000 crore farm loan waiver was meant to provide relief to farmers.
But in the drought affected Bundelkhand, the move seems far removed from ground reality and is being greeted with skepticism.
Four-year-long drought, more than 200 farmer deaths and a lakh other farmers battling the debt trap. One would have believed that the Finance Minister's Rs 60,000 crore bonanza would be a super hit in Bundelkhand but the farmers are untouched.
Gauri Shankar Bidua who is a farmer in Bundelkhand says, “The loan waiver is only for the small and marginal farmer who has less than five acres of land. They in any case are not given a bank loan except for the kisan credit card. Those who have tractors loans etc are exempted from this waiver."
Shanti Devi owned only a patch of one acre land. Since the collateral was too little the bank loan was refused. Shanti went to the local moneylender and that Rs 10,000 loan has today cost her the only source of livelihood - the land itself.
"I had taken Rs 10,000 from the money lender at 10 per cent per month. He has taken away my land," Shanti says.
Like Shanti, Ramkali too fell prey to the moneylender after taking a loan from him to repay the bank installment. The bank loan waiver now means little to her.
Ramkali says, “Even if we sell ourselves this loan won’t go. Now that everything is gone we are reduced to being daily wage labourers."
Village after village we visited painted the same story.
Farmer Sajjan Kushwaha says, “With this waiver the bank loan is gone all right but the loan I have from the money lender is now three fold, what do I do?"
The trap of the moneylender is something even the administration acknowledges.
Jhansi district magistrate Rajeev Aggarwal says, “There are problems associated with money lenders. It’s a reality and we are trying to find a way out."
The Finance Minister has promised a 25 per cent one time waiver on the loans of big farmers too but even they are unhappy, the wells have dried up, the canals that were built to showcase the Government's seriousness only carry dust now with no means to water their field, farmers in this region have lost their means of livelihood.
The national rural employment guarantee scheme has ensured some income to a few villages but clearly that’s not enough.
No irrigation facilities and no rain means even the last few standing crop in Bundelkhand is now dying and may be that’s what makes the farmers here skeptical.
The common refrain being, had the Government really been serious about the farmer's well being, efforts would have been made to improve rural infrastructure and income generators instead of populist measures like loan waiver.
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