Cutting across the political spectrum, leaders of all sections of farmers welcome Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s decision to waive crop loans availed by small and medium farmers from primary agricultural cooperative banks.
However, all of them uniformly have urged her to consider waiver of crop loans of farmers, irrespective of categorisation, availed from scheduled commercial and nationalised banks.
Ms. Jayalalithaa’s act has given farmers immense happiness, hope and encouragement, observes Coordinator of the Tamil Nadu All Farmers’ Federations P.R. Pandian. The Chief Minister could urge the Centre to waive crop loans availed by farmers from nationalised banks, Mr. Pandian noted.
“The Chief Minister will be doing yeoman service to the farming community as a whole if she undertakes to compensate the scheduled commercial banks and nationalised banks the crop loans availed by farmers. Their debt burden that had increased over the past several years due to a plethora of factors will be eased a lot,” general secretary of the Federation of Farmers' Associations of Cauvery Delta Districts Arupathy P. Kalyanan from Nagapattinam region told The Hindu .
Tamil Nadu Vivasaya Thozhilalar Sangam vice-president V. Jeevakumar said the announcement of waiver was certainly good news for small and marginal farmers. In the same vein she could consider the plight of the poor landless agricultural labourers who would suffer if farming failed due to any reason whatsoever. As she had emphasised repeatedly that she could go beyond what she had promised she should extend specific social sector benefits to the poor landless agricultural labourers that would better their livelihood, Mr. Jeevakumar said.
They urge CM to take steps for waiver of loans taken from nationalised banks
