Fadnavis writes off farm loans as Chouhan vows to uphold crop MSP
The Maharashtra government said it will write off the loans of most of its 1.34 crore farmers, and Madhya Pradesh announced a crackdown against those short-changing cultivators as the two BJP-ruled states rushed on Sunday to placate growing resentment in the agriculture sector.
Farmers in both states have held protests demanding better prices for their crops and for crores of rupees of their debt waived off. Farmers’ unions threatened to intensify their agitation if the government did not heed to their requests by next week.
In Mumbai, a marathon meeting between farmers and a committee of senior ministers resulted in a truce after the government said it will immediately waive off loans of farmers with less than 5 acre of land. For others, they agreed on forming a panel to come up with a set of conditions for the debt write-off. The panel will include members of farmer unions, Chandrakant Patil, state revenue minister said.
In Madhya Pradesh, where five farmers were shot dead by police during a protest on June 6, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said purchasing farm produce at rates lower than the Minimum Support Price (MSP) will be treated as a crime.
Contrary to expectations from some farmer groups, he did not announce a debt write-off.
He urged farmers to make use of an existing government scheme that gives them interestfree credit to pay off bank dues.
Violent protests by farmers in Mandsaur spilled over to several other districts, including the Malwa-Nimad area and even reached the state capital.
The unrest in both states coincides with a larger resentment toward the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre.
Maharashtra’s debt write-off will cost around ~30,000 crore, officials said, and the committee led by Patil will draw up the specifics of the budgeting.
Financial experts have urged caution over farm loan waivers, warning that it will weaken finances of states. The warnings have come from Reserve Bank of India chief Urjit Patel and Arundhati Bhattacharya, the head of India’s largest public-sector State Bank of India.
The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a farmers’ union that shares its ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with the BJP, blamed the Narendra Modi government’s “irrational policies”.
“The Centre is more con-
cerned about consumers and rising prices of food items than farmers. They are not a priority for the government,” BKS national secretary Mohini Mohan Mishra said, according to PTI.
Earlier on Saturday, the Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh — a collective of 62 farmers’ unions — said farmers across the country will block national highways between 12pm and 3pm on June 16 to protest the Centre’s “antifarmer policies”.
Opposition parties have also criticised the Union government over the rural distress.
The stand-off between the West Bengal government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) over an indefinite strike called by the regional party from Monday is showing no signs of abatement, with both sides refusing to back down.
The Mamata Banerjee government on Sunday issued an order mandating all government offices across Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts to remain open, making it clear that there should be no disruption of life on account of the strike. It also stipulated that every state government employee must report to duty until the strike is withdrawn, and leaves without prior approval or a “genuine reason” should not be granted.
The GJM leadership challenged the order, stating that any repressive tactic employed by the state government would be met with more intense agitations.
It is feared that this display of political upmanship will be at the cost of the region’s law-andorder situation in the days to come. The situation worsened on Sunday morning, when police arrested five GJM activists on charges of sparking violence in the hills a couple of days ago. The Morcha leadership shot back by asking tourists to immediately leave the hills ahead of the indefinite strike.
GJM president Bimal Gurung told HT that the arrest of party activists has only spurred them to intensify their movement for a
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