The former Revenue Minister B. Somashekar has accused Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram of being responsible for the closure of nearly 2,500 rural banks from 2004.
This, he claimed, had increased the debt burden of rural people as they were forced to borrow from moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest rates.
Mr. Somashekar, who recently joined the BJP, told presspersons here that the debt burden of rural people had increased from 28 per cent to 48 per cent.
“Lack of access to rural credit, coupled with the compelling situation to take recourse to private moneylenders is the main reason for farmers committing suicide,” he said while trying to get to the root of the agrarian crisis.
He wondered how the government could even think of linking Aadhaar with bank accounts when such a huge number of rural banks had been closed down.
Accusing the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of increasing the country’s loan burden, he said on an average the country was borrowing Rs. 1,630 crore a day against Rs. 22 crore a day during the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule.
Later, speaking to The Hindu , he described the UPA government as “bankrupt” and accused it of borrowing heavily without any substantial increase in employment or asset creation. He ridiculed the Congress’ election promise of implementing reservation for Dalits in the private sector as only “lip sympathy”. The Congress had been making this promise for quite some time, he said, and wondered why the party did not make an effort to implement it while it was in power.
He alleged that the Congress was hoodwinking Dalits and Muslims by using them merely as its vote banks. “If the Congress is really committed to providing equal opportunities for Dalits, it should have appointed a Dalit as the Chief Minister of the State as there were senior and deserving leaders,” he said.
Mr. Somashekar, who earlier headed the State unit of the Janata Dal (United), said he had no choice but to join the BJP to identify himself with a party with nationalistic perspective after the JD(U) pulled out of the NDA.
