After taking over Punjab's reins, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Wednesday met the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for first time putting forward the loan waiver issue of farmers in the State.
“I mentioned the debt waiver issue to the Prime Minister. It was an extension of the demand we made earlier when we had gone to meet the Prime Minister as part of a Congress delegation led by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. I said that the debt loan waiver should be extended to Punjab farmers along the lines of Uttar Pradesh,” Capt Amarinder said after his meeting with Modi at the Parliament House.
Capt Amarinder called for a special Central Government package to provide one-time loan waiver to the beleaguered, debt-ridden farmers of Punjab.
Describing the meeting as a courtesy call during which the issue of farm debt waiver was also discussed, Capt Amarinder said that though he had sought financial assistance from the Centre, his Government was committed to waive off the farmers’ loans in the State and had already initiated a time-bound process for the same.
The State Cabinet had, in its maiden meeting, directed to take necessary steps to implement the Congress poll promise on farm debt waiver, he pointed out.
Expressing concern over the recent spate of farmer suicides in his State, Capt Amarinder said he had requested Modi to announce a special package to pull out the farmers of Punjab out of the
debt-trap.
The mounting farm debts was making the agriculture in Punjab increasingly unsustainable, endangering not only the food security of the nation but also the social fabric of this sensitive border State, said Capt Amarinder, citing the pioneering role of Punjab in the production of food-grains and thereby in National Food Security.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, the chief minister said that the total farm debt in Punjab amounted to more than Rs 80,000 crore, including the crop loans in the cooperative sector amounting to about Rs 12,500 crore.
The average debt per farm household in Punjab works out to be Rs 8lakh (including crop loan), while the state’s per hectare debt of small and marginal farmers was the highest in India.
Capt Amarinder lamented that the problem had become so severe that many farmers were driven to suicide to escape the social and moral consequences of not being able to repay their debts.
With the institutional sources of credit unable to provide the much-needed respite, especially to the marginal and small farmers, there was need to review the central government’s agricultural policies to mitigate the emerging agrarian crisis in the State, he added.
Citing data, Capt Amarinder said that the state had produced a record 160.50 lMT of wheat during Rabi 2016-17, of which 108.24 lMT was procured for the central pool.
Despite the prevailing drought-like situation, the state also produced record 186.76 lMT of paddy during kharif 2016 and procured 143.33 lMT for Central Pool.
The state has also achieved all-time record productivity of 756 kg lint per ha cotton during 2016-17, he added.
Despite their contribution, farmers were suffering from the woes of increasing costs, shrinking resource base and declining incomes, leading to accumulation of debt burden of the Punjab farmers, especially the small farmers, he said.
Capt Amarinder said that while these factors had forced the farmers into a vicious debt trap, the rising agricultural subsidies and deteriorating natural resources were further aggravating the state’s agricultural woes.