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Agrarian crisis haunting the Telugu States – High Court
Highlights
Growing farmers’ suicides all over the country symbolise the deep agrarian crisis. With over two lakh farmers committing suicides over the past two decades, India’s farmers are giving a call to the nation’s conscience.
Growing farmers’ suicides all over the country symbolise the deep agrarian crisis. With over two lakh farmers committing suicides over the past two decades, India’s farmers are giving a call to the nation’s conscience.
Ultimately, this remains as an indictment of new-economic policies initiated in 1991, which are said to be without a human face. Two Telugu states—Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have seen some of the worst times in terms of farmer suicides
Recently, a division bench of Hyderabad High Court directed both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments to hold meeting with stakeholders and petitioners concerned and come up with concrete proposals before the court for addressing the issue of farmers’ suicides and to place a report by Jan 4, the next date of hearing.It has also made it clear that crop loan waiver was not a permanent solution to averting farmers’ suicides in the two states.
The court observed that the governments’ decision to waive crop loans will give only temporary relief but will not address the problem (farmers’ suicides). In fact, passing a general order on waiver of crop loans will cover even the undeserving people. Extent of land is the only criterion to be applied for extending benefits. There is a need to look at the root cause of the suicide problem.
Common features should be identified in respect of the suicides that took place in the past few years.Nearly 75 per cent of the farming in Telangana is on dry land and 80 per cent of the farmers come under small and marginal categories. Due to lack of land ownership records, institutional credit is accessible only to 30 per cent farmers, while the majority still relies on private money-lenders by paying exorbitant interest. So, the government’s farm loan waiver scheme has not benefited most farmers, which pushed them into further debts, it noted.
The court observed that the government waived the loans only partially. As a result, the farmers were not discharged of their existing loans and banks could not grant them fresh loans. They were forced to approach money lenders again and so, the spiral of high interest rates, mounting debts and suicides continue. It also noted that had the loan waiver scheme has been implemented in its entirety; they would not have thought death was the only way out.
The High Court observed it would be better to find out the reasons and prevent suicides, rather than announce ex gratia to bereaved families.
Recognizing the fact for the demand for one- time waiver of the institutional loans taken by farmers, the government of Telangana is keeping its option open on one-time- settlement (OTS) of the remaining half of the Rs.17,000 crore crop loan waiver by repaying Rs.8,500 crore to banks at one go with fund-pooling, even as the government proposed to allocate only Rs,4250 crore in the 2016-17 budget estimated to meet the third quarter of the loan waiver.
In this direction, the Commercial Taxes Department was instructed to speed up settlement of cases to clear about Rs.4500 crore tax areas from traders and commercial establishments so that the accruals could be pooled-up for supporting the crop loan waiver scheme.
The government is also expecting the pending arrears and funds through FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budge Management) to clear the remaining Rs.8,500 crore crop loan waiver in a single go.
Besides this, the government was relying mostly on the Commercial Taxes Department for mobilizing funds for the purpose since the issue is likely to be raked up again by the opposition parties during the budget session of legislature.
Apart from the tax revenue, the State government is keeping its hopes on the revenue from sale of lands in and around Hyderabad, from regularization of lands and settlement of land-related cases pending in courts and has asked the departments concerned to spare funds for crop loan waiver.
A special drive conducted in October had yielded good results by getting a sizeable dues cleared and the commercial department has been planning to launch another such campaign by the month-end, by which the third quarter of the current financial year comes to an end. The State government had explored various options to implement OTS immediately after the September-October legislature session.
The Commercial Taxes officials were also issued clear instructions to get all dues cleared by the end of the current financial year so that the realized funds could help the government to silence the Opposition on the crop loan waiver issue.
The state government had also initiated some of the recommendations made by the Swaminathan committee for the waiver crop loans at one go to mitigate the sufferings of farmers.
The court also observed that extension of crop loan waiver was only one of the solutions to provide relief to farmers. First, there is a need to identify the farmers who have one or two acres of land. Second, there is a need to identify the common features for the suicides committed by farmers. It also noted that the farmers who own 30 acres or more are not committing suicides.
Indebtedness, crop failure, bigger size of the family are some of the factors that resulted in suicides by small farmers. If common points are identified by having a survey then there is possibility to address the grievance,” the bench noted. The bench also observed that many undeserving farmers were also benefiting from waivers.
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