Long before Freakonomics became a rage, Swamionomics was quietly making waves among the TOI readers.. And I am reading a lot of stuff on what an election winning budget the FM has produced and how its a win-win for the government and the farmers. Is it really? Swamionomics begs to differ and I most certainly agree with him (I hate sops - whether on such big a scale or something as small as a new responsibilty without a pay hike :) )
Following are the points which do not justify the waiver:
1. It has grossly over estimated the number of farmers who are under debt. It has estimated that half of Indian farmers do not/cannot repay the loans, which can hardly be the case! Moreover, not everyone is fortunate to get a loan sanctioned from the government. There will be a huge percentage of farmeres dependant upon the local money lenders.The figure expected to be benefitted is 500% of the actual figure and hence will convert into only 20% of the votes it is expected to win!
2. Due to the above mentioned point, there is no relief for the farmers who are actually needy but have acquired money from the lenders. In fact, there is a potential danger of the these farmers turning their votes against the incumbent goverment due to plain resentment that the goverment has favoured a few over all of them.
3. Loans are written off only for small farmers, those who own less than one acre. Most of the Indian farmers stay in joint families and the land is jointly owned by everyone within that family. When calculated, this will turn out to be quite less than one acre/head. But this cannot be shown and utilised for the waiver due to which a large portion of the farmer population has been left out. This sector is also going to turn against the government.
4. Those who struggled to repay their loans regularly would feel cheated. Punished for their honesty. Need I say, whom these will vote for?
So all-in-all this budget has waived off loans without any foresight. It has not learnt from the previous lessons too. The last time this was done on a massive scale, farmers reportedly found it very difficult to secure a loan from any bank as banks wanted themselves covered from all sides, lest they see a repeat telecast of this!! Again, farmer dissent :) !
1 comment:
Hey agreed ur point of view...but i guess this relates to a smaller portion of the population than the one actually targeted one...also it is said that the farmers will be educated on this so that no further debts incurred..i guess the gov would hav definetly calculated the benefits they get after this step.
But ya its true if this continues..some mite relax..so a proper reform should b done so tat this laying off of debt gets benefitted to all..atleast the suicide index wil go down :)
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