There is a general perception among farmers that the budget announced by Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Thursday, lacks a long-term vision for agriculture.
The ₹34,000 crore waiver comes with a rider — a cut-off date of December 31, 2017, and a cap of ₹2 lakh, said Kurubur Shanthakumar, State president of the Sugarcane Farmers’ Association. “There is no clarity on whether the loan waiver is applicable for advances availed from cooperative banks or public sector banks,” he added.
The budget has announced a “waiver of all defaulted crop loans of farmers made up to December 31, 2017, in the first stage”. Though Mr. Kumaraswamy had promised to waive ₹53,000 crore of crop loans at the meetings held with farmers, he has failed to keep the same, said Badagalpura Nagendra of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS).
Farmers in Karnataka have suffered either due to drought or floods in 11 of the 16 years, and they take a few years to overcome the financial distress suffered from each natural calamity. Hence, the State government should have waived ₹53,000 crore to benefit more farmers, said Mr. Nagendra and Mr. Shanthakumar.
He also took exception to the announcement that farmers, who had repaid loans in time, would get ₹25,000 or the repaid loan amount (whichever is less) as an encouragement . He said it amounts to penalising the farmers who had cleared the loan in entirety.
The KRRS said the budget lacked a long-term vision for the comprehensive development of agriculture as there are no definite programmes for shoring up agriculture. Merely waiving loans periodically will not help farmers and the need of the hour was to conceive long-term plans for their empowerment and bring in structural changes in the agricultural sector, it said.
“There is confusion among policy makers as the budget announces support for Israeli model of farming on one hand, which is technology-intensive, and zero-budget farming on the other, which is a contrarian approach to agriculture,” said Mr. Nagendra.
