Tenant farmers' travails to get loans from banks

Many fail to repay the loans Sripathi Srinivas Nizamabad: Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Agriculture Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana and ministers repeatedly claim that their government has been striving for the welfare of farmers. They also said that tenant farmers would get loans and other benefits from banks. But in practice, they have been facing hardships to get loans from banks due to various reasons. The bank officials or the agriculture officials do not possess particulars about tenant farmers in the district. According to unofficial sources, there are about 40,000 tenant farmers in Nizamabad district. Last year, 10,141 tenant farmers applied for loan eligibility cards and 8,550 were issued cards. But the cards of 2,670 were cancelled due to discrepancies. Finally, bankers have listed 5,674 tenant farmers as eligible for loans. Only 896 tenant farmers were given loans amounting to Rs 5.73 cr last year. In the current year only 292 farmers were identified as eligible for loans and only 17 were given loans by the bankers. Loans ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 18,000 for cultivating paddy, Rs 32,000 to Rs 35,000 for turmeric, Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 for maize and Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 for sugarcane are given by bankers to farmers.

The District Collector Christina Z Chongthu, during her meeting with bankers, urged the bankers to provide loans to farmers and tenant farmers. But bankers are not coming forward to provide loans to tenant farmers on various grounds. In most cases, the tenant farmers are not repaying the loans taken by them from bankers. The bankers are not able to bring pressure on the tenant farmers as the latter do not have rights on the agriculture land which they cultivate. In some other cases, the farm land owners are raising objections to give loans to tenant farmers. If the tenant farmers fail to repay the loans, the bankers are approaching land owners. If the land owners avail loans, then it would not be possible to provide loans to tenant farmers of the same land. Two loans would not be given on the same piece of land, bankers maintain. Among the tenant farmers who had availed loans last year not even 15 per cent of them had repaid their loans. Genuine tenant farmers continue to face troubles to get loans because of defaulters among them.