Click to play videoVaishali (Bihar): Ratan Lal earns his bread farming on a 1.5-acre land. He once borrowed Rs 10,000 from the Patliputra Grameen Bank to buy seeds and hasn't been able to repay the loan he took much before March 31, 2007.
It was Ratan Lal, and farmers like him, the UPA government had in mind while announcing the Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver in this year's budget. But today Ratan Lal feels cheated.
“The Finance Minister said the loans will be waived. But banks here are just not interested. We have no news on why this isn’t happening. The banks say they will act on it only if they are given something in writing,” he says.
The Union Government expects this populist move would strengthen their farmer's vote bank. But those sitting in Delhi seems far away from the ground reality. For farmers, the ordeal continues as ever before.
Ratan Lal and hundreds of farmers in the region still get frequent reminders on their pending loans, most often through goons allegedly sent by banks they have taken loan from.
Says Sunita Kumari, a farmer's wife, “The men of the house do not stay at home all the time. So these people come and threaten us.”
When informed, the state Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh assured all help to the troubled farmers.
"We will conduct an inquiry into it and will ensure such things do not happen,” he says.
The UPA, after the largesse for farmers, might be hoping for a bumper harvest in the next elections. But if the farmers don't get the fruits of the loan waiver as promised, what might await the UPA could be a failed crop.
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