Letters: Avoid 'cowboy banking'

It is time the government prepared a robust framework to mitigate agricultural distress

Avoid ‘cowboy banking’

With reference to the editorial, “Loan politics” (June 13), addressing an election rally in the parched Jhajjar district of Haryana in 2004, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had promised to usher in a second Green Revolution in the country.

Referring to the late Devi Lal’s loan waiver scheme, he said he “did not believe in such populist measures” as they were virtual invitations to default. The solution to farmers’ woes, he argued, lay in making their profession lucrative. Therefore, he promised to bring down interest rate on farming loans gradually to five per cent and