Waiver: Pawar begins scoring political points

BUDGET 2008-09 IMPACT

The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver for farmers announced in this year's Budget is being projected as a major achievement of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in his stronghold and sugar cane country western Maharashtra.

The minister has unleashed a blitzkrieg of advertisements of his Nationalist Congress Party, addressing sugar cane farmers there.

On the other hand, Congress leaders in the party stronghold of Vidarbha are on the defensive, even as farmer groups are openly saying that Pawar engineered the package to weaken the Congress in Vidarbha.

The political sub-plot to the waiver has once again added to the agony of the dryland farmers who were earlier denied a waiver when the prime minister announced a relief package.

The waiver benefits sugar cane and horticulture crops vastly, while the benefits for cotton farmers and those doing unirrigated farming are minimal. For, while loan available for dryland farming is Rs 4,000 an acre, it is Rs 50,000 for irrigated farming, which sugar cane farmers do.

Hence the waiver will be a lottery for farmers in western Maharashtra and in Pawar's constituency of Baramati. The advertisements seek to drive the point home.

The full page advertisements appearing in Marathi newspapers on March 1, with several pictures of Pawar, trumpet home the fact that the waiver is meant to benefit the sugar cane and horticulture farmers of western Maharashtra rather than the cotton farmers of Vidarbha.

Pawar's advertisements in newspaper Sakal's Nagpur edition, for instance, talk about how loans for tractors will be waived.

The advertisements in Lokmat and Tarun Bharat, which appeared on March 1, also splashed Pawar's picture and highlighted the waiver saying that loans for pipes, wells, tractors and buying of cattle would be waived.

The Sakal advertisement, which says 'vachanapurti' or fulfillment of a promise, has four photos of Pawar. One has a caption saying that in 1973 he brought the first waiver scheme for farmers.

It adds that "When I say give up farming, I mean that not everyone should be doing just farming". Another photo shows Pawar sitting on a tractor saying: "I am a farmer and I know the problems of farmers."

The advertisement, describing the features of the package, says that the scheme will include crop loans, loans for digging wells and tubewells, pipelines, electric motors, buying of cattle, besides loans for horticulture and fisheries.

The significance of the emphasis on loans for pipelines, wells and electric motors and tractors is that these apply only to sugar cane and horticulture farmers who do irrigated farming and get loans to buy these.

The cotton farmers in the 11 districts of Vidarbha, on the other hand, do dryland farming and the loans they get are just Rs 4,000 an acre and cannot in any case let them buy tractors.

The minimum loan for horticulture is Rs 1 lakh, says Vijay Jaiwanthia of Shetkari Sanghatana, Wardha.