Vidarbha sop leaves trail of discontent

Waifat village "" around 120 km from Nagpur "" was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's last stop before he announced his special Rs 3,750-crore revival package for six districts of Vidarbha, which has seen six consecutive years of crop failure, rising debt levels of farmers, and a large number of suicides.

Singh's trip "" the first by a PM into the interiors of Vidarbha "" was meant to give him a first-hand feel of the crisis.

Though no suicide case had been reported from Waifat, the PM chose to visit the village on the advice of P Sainath, a well-known scholar on rural and agricultural issues.

Sainath's logic was that the farmers in this village were quite "articulate" and could express their concerns better than their counterparts in other villages.

This has led to strong resentment among villagers, with the impression gaining ground that it was a clever move by the state government to keep the PM away from the real hardships of the people.

The conspiracy theory has been flying thick and fast. So, after heavy rains forced the PM to abort his trip to Koljhari village where a farmer had committed suicide, a delegation of villagers refused to meet him at the Yavatmal airport on the ground that the local administration was preventing the PM from coming to know of the ground reality.

The overall impression here seems to be that the package was a case of too little coming too late. Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti, who has filed a public interest petition in the Bombay High Court on the issue of farmer suicides, gives an example: The PM's decision to give Rs 3 crore (Rs 50 lakh for each of the six worst-hit districts) means that farmers will get Rs 30 each if the amount is disbursed among 3 million of them.

Cotton farmer Manoj Chandurkar says the package does not address major demands like a higher remunerative price for cotton, a complete loan waiver, and an import duty hike to protect cotton growers.

"The interest waiver, loan restructuring, and irrigation projects will help banks, construction contractors, and drip irrigation system manufacturers. We have got nothing," he feels.

Opposition parties have also joined the chorus of voices dubbing the package as inadequate. President of BJP's state unit Nitin Gadkari, who has been camping here, says it was nothing but an eyewash as it skirted the main issue.

"The cost of agricultural loans is the highest in Maharashtra. Even a farmer in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar gets loans at 8 to 9 per cent; but due to the co-operative banking system, a farmer in Maharashtra pays nearly 12-13 per cent interest."