Wednesday, 09 Oct, 2024
By: Anshul Vipat
In 2008, the then-UPA government had introduced a massive farm loan waiver of Rs 60,000 crore. Image Source: IANS
Only around half of the intended beneficiaries of farm loan waivers declared by ten States since 2014 have actually got debt write-offs
Only around half of the intended beneficiaries of farm loan waivers declared by ten States since 2014 have actually got debt write-offs. According to the study conducted by State Bank of India (SBI), out of approximately 3.7 crore eligible farmers only around 50% of the farmers received the amount of loan waiver till March 2022.
The results of ten farm loan write-offs totaling roughly 2.53 trillion rupees declared by nine states, beginning with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, formed the basis for the SBI analysis. Telangana performed worst with only 5 percent implementation. The southern state was followed by Madhya Pradesh (12%), Jharkhand (13%), Punjab (24%) and Karnataka (38%). Uttar Pradesh managed to write-off debt of 52 percent farmers.
By contrast, farm loan waivers implemented by Chhattisgarh in 2018 and Maharashtra in 2020 were received by 100 percent and 91 percent of the eligible farmers respectively. In Andhra Pradesh, 92 percent of the 42 lakh farmers who qualified for loan waivers have benefited. According to SBI researchers, a similar waiver issued by Maharashtra in 2017 for 67 lakh farmers, totaling 34,000 crores, has been implemented for 68 percent of the beneficiaries.
According to experts, possible rejection of farmers' claim, limited or low fiscal space to meet promises, and change in governments in subsequent years, as the possible reasons for the low implementation rate of these loan waivers.
The analysis has raised questions on whether benefits help farmers who are in true need, in addition to benefits not reaching the targeted farmers. A similar report by RBI last year had stated that large farmers with holding over 10 hectares got away with 41 per cent of the crop loan (these are short-term loan used for financing purchase of agri-inputs) even as they account for a mere 0.6 per cent of the total number of farmers. Semi-medium and medium farmers, owning between 2 -10 hectares (they are 13.2 per cent of all) got bulk of the balance 59 per cent. At the other extreme, small and marginal farmers (they are 86.2 per cent of the total number) got very little; in fact, nearly 41 per cent of them don’t even have access to banks.
In 2008, the then-UPA government had introduced a massive farm loan waiver of Rs 60,000 crore. Since then, the following states have waived off farm loans: Andhra Pradesh (Rs 240 billion; 2014-15); Telangana (Rs 170 billion; 2014-15); Tamil Nadu (Rs 52.8 billion; 2016-17); Maharashtra (Rs 340.2 billion; 2017-18); Uttar Pradesh (Rs 363.6 billion; 2017-18); Punjab (Rs 100 billion; 2017-18); Karnataka (Rs 180 billion; 2017-18); Karnataka (Rs 440 billion; 2018-19); Rajasthan (Rs 180 billion; 2018-19); Madhya Pradesh (Rs 365 billion; 2018-19); Chhattisgarh (Rs 61 billion; 2018-19).
