Farm Loan Waivers A Key

Farm loan waivers have become a staple promise in Indian elections, particularly in agricultural states. These debt relief schemes, though providing temporary respite, but no permanent solution on agrarian distress. Political leadership is always under tremendous pressure to provide instant relief to the farmers reeling under debt trap, resulting in suicides. Often, suicides by peasants are widely covered in the media which in turn sway the people’s perception about apparent indifference of the government towards the farming communities of the country. However, political parties tend to use farm loan waiver as tactics to come to power in spite of the fact that such populist measures are not good for the economy, nor do they offer a long-term solution. So use this age-old problem to gain political mileage. But looking at the previous instances the farming community many times bolted the doors on the ruling parties.

Maharashtra introduced the first Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj loan waiver scheme for farmers in 2017 when Fadnavis was chief minister of the BJP-Shiv Sena government. In the subsequent elections the BJP failed to get the majority. When the MVA government under Uddhav Thackeray came to power in 2019, one of its first decisions was to introduce the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule loan waiver scheme to put its own imprint on the programme. This scheme was modelled on the previous one but the payout and cut-off dates were different. Under this scheme, the loan write-off amount was increased and farmers who took loans of up to Rs 2 lakh between 2015 and 2019 were eligible for a loan waiver.

In 2022, the government changed again when Eknath Shinde rebelled against the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena with a majority of MLAs in tow and caused a vertical split in the party. Shinde’s Shiv Sena formed a government with the BJP with Shinde as chief minister. Within a month of coming to power, the Shinde government added another layer to the farm loan waiver—an incentive of Rs 50,000 to farmers who had been paying their dues on time.

In spite of this the agrarian community is sulking. Farmers in the state are now dejected due to low crop prices, high input costs, and below MSP rates. Anger may impact forthcoming assembly elections.