The suicide by 26-year-old Alagar, a farmer in Ariyalur district in the State on Friday has shocked the farming community in Tamil Nadu. Alagar resorted to the extreme step because officials of the private finance company from where he availed a loan to purchase a tractor assaulted him and took away the tractor.
“Alagar had availed a loan of Rs 7 lakh and has repaid Rs5 lakh. Due to some reasons he could not repay the remaining instalments. He should have been given time for repaying the loan,” RV Giri, president, Consortium of Indian Farmers Association (CIFA) ,told The Pioneer. He also said that there is no system in the country to monitor whether the amount set apart by the union finance minister in the budget for agriculture reaches small and marginal farmers.
Alagar’s suicide comes immediately after the assault on Balan, another farmer in Thanjavur by the officials of private finance company for not paying back the loan he had availed for buying a tractor. The bank officials were helped by police in assaulting Balan and seizing his tractor. “The police had no right to interfere in the case. All laws in the land has been thrown to the winds by the police by assaulting Balan,” said the CIFA president.
He said farmers were forced to seek loans from private finance companies because of the failure of nationalised banks to dole out loans to them. “The public sector banks take around three months to sanction an agricultural loan. It is easy to avail a vehicle loan than availing a crop loan,” said Giri. He pointed out that loan for cars or bikes are cleared within hours while the requests from farmers for crop loan are deliberately delayed by the bank officials
An official of State Bank of Travancore confided that clearance of agricultural loans are a long drawn out process. “It may take months since we have to ensure that the collateral security offered by the farmers in lieu of the loan has not been mortgaged elsewhere. A retired government official like Tahsildar should certify the legality of the security,” said the official who did not want his name to be quoted.
Giri, the first person from Tamil Nadu to become the CIFA chief said though the union finance minister has set apart an amount of Rs9 lakh crore to “ensure adequate and timely flow of credit to the farmers”, there is no monitoring system to check whether they receive the loans in time. “Big time farmers get crores as loans to buy sugarcane, wheat and paddy harvesters which cost millions. But the banks look the other way when small and marginal farmers approach them for loans,” said Giri. He wanted the entire Rs9 lakh crore set apart for agricultural loan should be utilised only for crop development purposes.
A senior SBT official agreed with the contention of Giri. “There is no monitoring system to ensure that the small and marginal farmers get their loans in time. It is the corporate farmers and landlords who hijack the loans leaving the small farmers at the mercy of private financiers,” said the official.