Farmer Loan Waiver
It shows that the Indian democracy has a long way to go that 'pork barrel politics' where politicians spend the public money to buy votes has been accepted so easily by not only the politicians but also by the general public.
The government is doling out Rs.60,000 crore of public money to excuse bad loans by farmers. How does this really solve the farmer suicide problem? Just throwing money at the problem will not solve it. You have to figure out how to increase productivity.
Why can't the UPA government take a leaf out of the Gujarat governments page and increase the agricultural growth rate to at least 8% from the current 2% (Gujarat's is 12%). For obvious reasons, Gujarat doesn't have any farmer suicides.
What about the farmers who have honestly paid back the loans? What precedent is this setting. The government is encouraging people to be dishonest. How do banks lend to farmers in the future?
Even if the loans were to be excused, they could have wiped off the interest keeping the principal to be repaid back.
What about the people who take loans from friends, family and other private parties?
Actually this isn't a problem about borrowing money, the problem is agricultural productivity and lack of infrastructure.
Of course our learned Prime Minister blamed the farmers problems on the NDA government, but then what was the UPA doing for the last 4 years?
Funnily enough one of the constituents of the UPA, the agricultural minister Mr. Sharad Pawar said that this scheme would not stop farmer suicides!
The problem is that there isn't enough protest from the general public and the corporate houses seem to be falling over each other to please the Finance Minister.
1 comment:
Money for free.. tch tch tch. and whats worse is that the media is totally dead to the issue. They only react when it suits them.
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