BJP promises farm loans at 6%

President-designate Rajnath Singh turns to farmers, announces 16-point charter.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have rediscovered swadeshi and farmer with the impending change of guard in the party.

In its economic resolution, the party charged the Manmohan Singh government with "policy paralysis" and came out with a 16-point charter of demands to help people, especially farmers, who were committing suicides in several states.

The economic resolution had a sizeable portion on agriculture not just in the context of the World Trade Organisation negotiations but also because its president-designate Rajnath Singh chose to speak at length on the issue.

Singh said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was neglecting growth of the agriculture sector, which was the "core sector of the economy". "The real India lives in its villages. Development of the country cannot happen without the development of farmers," Singh said.

"Our growth was badly affected by mere following of other country's development models. We want a model, which will give agriculture top priority in development," he said. "First, we copied the USSR and later the US. We need to come up with our own model," he said.

Singh promised that if the party returned to power, it would reduce interest on farm loans from the prevailing 8.5-9 per cent to 6 per cent. "We will also take steps to strengthen co-operative banks, the only financial institutions that extend cheap loans to farmers," he said.

Singh said as agriculture minister in the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government he had floated a crop insurance scheme. "This present government praised the scheme but failed to implement it," he said.

As if on cue, the economic resolution also became a manifesto for swadeshi with former BJP chief MM Joshi putting up a strong case for the Indian retail sector and its capacity for generating jobs.

He said the economy could not be expected to surge on the achievements of the service sector alone. "We can ignore manufacturing only at our own peril," he said.

The resolution was drafted by VK Malhotra and was passed by the BJP national council today. The stress on swadeshi and agriculture is being considered a major re-orientation of the party, and that the ghost of "feel good" and "India Shining" has been finally laid to rest.

The BJP also wanted pensions funds reforms to be expedited so that the government did not face insurmountable financial crisis in the next decade. It wanted a time-bound plan for phasing out of central taxes, so that a true value-added tax system could be put in place.