Govt forcibly integrating villagers into techno-financial

Farmers bodies today accused government of forcibly integrating rural masses into techno-financial regimes for profits to corporates through demonetisation, which they said has resulted in numerous hardships.
Alleging that the rural economies were not kept in mind before initating demonetisation, nearly 15 farmers bodies have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the move is causing tremendous hardships on the rural people who have limited access to such techno-financial regimes.
The bodies said that in villages across the country, farmers are facing numerous hardships including agricultural workers not getting paid owing to shortage of cash, cut in investments on crop management, farmers failing to sell their produce and those who have loans not even being able to repay.

"It appears that 'war on black money' and demonetisation are being used to forcibly integrate the rural masses into certain techno-financial regimes.
"While these assure profits for the corporate sectors that run these techno-financial systems, they imply tremendous hardships on the average rural person, whose access to such systems is limited and for whom such systems will serve little purpose.
"The implementation of such a system does not take into account the gap between metropolitan financial systems and that of the rural and agrarian economies, and reflects a lack of intimate knowledge about rural economies," they said.

They claimed the demonetisation will introduce new forms of corruption, punitive financial systems that will ensure huge profits to the corporate financiers and will intensify the "pauperisation" of the rural masses, especially small and marginal farmers who form the bulk of the farming population.

The letter was signed by officials of several organisations including ASHA-Kisan Swaraj, All India Coordination Committee of Farmers Movement (AICCFM), Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, Bhartiya Kissan Union (BKU), All India Kisan Sabha among others.
They also demanded withdrawl of all restrictions on
deposits and withdrawals from the cooperative banks, rolling back of withdrawal and deposit curbs on farmers on Jan Dhan Yojana accounts and announcement of a loan loan waiver to all farmers.
"History will remember this scheme as the most hurtful one since independence, in the name of resolving the problems of corruption, black money, and terrorism," they said.
Referring to announcements that government will take care of the interest on agri loans for 60 days, NABARD's pre-capitalisation of cooperative banks to a tune of Rs 41,000 crores and three crore Kisan Credit Cards being made into RuPay Debit cards, the bodies said these were "inadequate" and is a "rehash" of what already exists.

"When the entire agricultural season suffers due to an adverse effect because of the demonetisation move, postponing the loan repayment period by 60 days or the government bearing the interest for those 60 days to a tune of Rs 333 for Rs 50,000/crop loan is a pittance against the hardship inflicted, that too in a good year," the bodies said.
They said that the provision for RuPay and other debit cards against KCC existed since 2012 and 5.66 million such cards have already been issued in 2013-14 itself.
"A natural extension of this move by the UPA government should have actually covered three crore farmers by now and it would be surprising if that did not happen in the natural course of scaling up of this measure," they said.

The bodies said the government's timing of the demonetisation move had shown a "dismaying disregard" to farmers' livelihood cycles and selling of kharif produce was affected as were the rabi season agricultural operations.
The "biggest negative impact" of the demonetisation move so far is the destruction that is taking place of the rural cooperative banking sector, whereas there is a dire need to actually strengthen rural banking and agricultural credit in numerous ways, including removal of political interference, they said.
"The DCBs were not allowed to exchange or deposit invalidated Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. This affected 12 crore customers of 33 State Cooperative Banks and 367 District Cooperatives Banks, even though all these SCBs and 349 DCBs are on the core banking platform.

"About five crore farmers, despite having fulfilled due KYC norms and having received kisan credit card loans, are unable to repay loans and reports suggest that loan offtake has come down drastically. If the current trends continue, cooperative banks are headed towards decimation," they said.