A Half-Hearted Waive

A cash-strapped government finds ways to prune the list of loan-waiver beneficiaries by re-coding eligibility norms

- Rahul Noronha

The electoral promise of farm loan waivers was a major factor in the Congress winning Madhya Pradesh in December 2018. The party manifesto said all farmers’ loans of up to Rs 2 lakh would be written off. Then Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the party would do so within 10 days of assuming power. And Chief Minister Kamal Nath did issue waiver orders the very day he took charge.

Now, however, sources in the state government maintain that farmers whose loans exceed Rs 2 lakh will not be covered under the scheme as the promise was to waive loans only up to that sum. This will be a setback to farmers who thought the government would waive Rs 2 lakh off all loans and they would have to repay the amount in excess of that figure. The latest ‘clarification’ will exclude some 500,000 farmers from the beneficiary list.

When news of this development broke out, Congress spokespersons denied it at first. But the next day, a letterfrom the chief minister to the farmers appeared in the media. The letter asked farmers to continue repaying their loans.