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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Indian farmers need a new deal and not just loan waivers -Yogendra Yadav

Indian farmers need a new deal and not just loan waivers -Yogendra Yadav

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published Published on Dec 21, 2018   modified Modified on Dec 21, 2018
-ThePrint.in

Farmers’ issues have occupied centre stage after decades and compulsions of 2019 can create the political will to do something.

When Raghuram Rajan opposes farm loan waivers, he ought to be taken seriously. Not just because he has the academic and policy credentials to talk about banking. Not just because he is backed by twelve other well-known economists. And, not just because he had the guts, as the RBI governor, to take on corporate debt write-offs as well.

Raghuram Rajan ought to be taken seriously because he advances robust arguments: benefits of such a waiver often go to the best connected, it creates enormous stress for the fiscal health of the state government and it inhibits investment down the line. Bankers have often argued that loan waivers hurt credit culture and thus harm rural banking and, eventually, work against the farmers themselves. Agricultural economists tell us that farm loan waivers cannot solve the crisis of Indian agriculture.

These are valid arguments. Sure, a farm loan waiver by itself does not solve the problems of the Indian farmers. Indeed, loan waivers should be used very sparingly and as the very last resort by any government. But these objections apply to stand-alone, indiscriminate and repeated loan waivers of the kind usually announced by the government as a desperate pre-election gamble to buy farmers’ votes. That’s not what the farmers’ movements have been demanding. Sadly, neither the media nor the economists have cared to take a look at the demands and proposals put forward by the farmers’ movement. I refer here specifically to the demands and the bills proposed by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), the umbrella body of over 200 farmers’ organisations that brought farmers from all over the country to Delhi in a historic Kisan Mukti March last month. (Full disclosure: I have been on the executive committee of AIKSCC since its inception)

Let’s draw a distinction between karj maafi, the farm loan waiver (FLW) being proposed by political parties and governments, and karj mukti, the freedom from indebtedness (FFI) demanded by the farmers’ movements. These have a superficial resemblance as both contain an element of loan waiver. But the similarity ends there.

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ThePrint.in, 20 December, 2018, https://theprint.in/opinion/indian-farmers-need-a-new-deal-and-not-just-loan-waivers/166491/?fbclid=IwAR2FeeHRhapGhS1c0veQ-6JlAbbXCSSv-ZTiM4QicfI_Vg0NmccLn2SeP-M


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