Parth M.N.

large_01-IMG_1013-Jambhre-PMN-.jpg

medium_01-IMG_1013-Jambhre-PMN-.jpg

small_01-IMG_1013-Jambhre-PMN-.jpg

thumbnail_01-IMG_1013-Jambhre-PMN-.jpg

01-IMG_1013-Jambhre-PMN-.jpg

When Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of
Maharashtra, promised a farm loan waiver on June 6, he told the media it would
be “the biggest in history.” What has turned out to be the biggest however is
the number of conditions to qualify for the ‘waiver’.

So Bappasaheb Irkal, who was eagerly waiting for some
respite in the parched village of Parundi in Aurangabad district, did not know whether to laugh or
cry when he heard of these multiple conditions. “The upper limit [of the
waiver] is 1.5 lakh rupees,” says the 41-year-old farmer, while weeding on his
16-acre farmland along with his wife Radha and father Bhanudas. “I have a loan
of 9 lakhs. If I repay 7.5 lakhs, only then will I get the benefit of 1.5 lakh
rupees.”

Their bank loan, Radha says, piled up during the 2012-2015 drought years,
when successive crops failed. In 2014, the family built a four-kilometre
pipeline connecting a nearby lake to the well they had sunk. “But the rains
have been uneven this year too,” she says. “Tur and cotton dried up completely.
When Fadnavis said he would waive off the loans of the farmers in need, it gave
us hope. But this is a mockery of us. If we had money to repay, would we have a
debt on our head in the first place?”

02-IMG_0918-Radha_and_Bappasaheb-PMN-.jpg

The chief minister made the promise amid an
unprecedented farm strike in Maharashtra on June 1. The farmers’ most important
demands were the enforcement of the Swaminathan Commission’s long-pending recommendation
that they must get a minimum support price that covers the cost of production
plus 50 per cent, and a blanket loan waiver. To placate the angry farmers,
Fadnavis promised the waiver. But when the online application process for the
waiver was launched on July 24, the caveats that emerged have infuriated
farmers in the agrarian region of Marathwada. 

The cap of Rs. 1.5 lakh has excluded many farmers who
require the relief  the most. But those
with bank loans under, or around, Rs. 1.5 lakhs do not have an easy ride
either. 

Mangal Jambhre, 50, from Matefal village in Latur district, has a loan of Rs.
2 lakhs from the Bank of Maharashtra. She thought if she raised Rs. 50,000, she
would become eligible for the waiver. But then a caveat struck. “My son is [a jawan] in the army, posted
in Assam,” she says. “Having a government servant in the family disqualifies
farmers from availing the waiver.”

Mangal lost her husband in an accident 15 years ago. Since then, she has
run the household, and brought up two sons and a daughter while working tirelessly
on a four-acre farmland, where she cultivates tur and soyabean. Because the unpaid bank loan of Rs.
2 lakhs makes her ineligible for a new loan, in February she borrowed Rs. 1.5
lakhs from a private micro-financing firm for the June sowing season. “When I
heard of the loan waiver, I thought I would soon be eligible for a new bank
loan that would help me pay off this loan,” she says. “The interest rates are far
higher than the bank’s rates. I will pay some 70,000-80,000 rupees more [than
the principal amount] at the end of four years. And banks do not harass you
either.”

Mangal is
being humiliated by micro-finance recovery agents, who incessantly call and intimidate
her – she has been unable to repay the first six-monthly instalment of Rs.
28,800. “They threaten to take over the house,” she says. “They visit 4-5 times
a month. At times, I end up hiding at the neighbour’s house if I see them coming.
Had the state loan waiver worked out, I could have got rid of them permanently.” 

At a tea stall in the village, Digambar Khose, 62, is distraught
too. He has three acres of farmland in his name, five acres each in the names
of two sons, and three acres in the name of his daughter-in-law. “I owe one lakh
rupees to the bank,” he explains. “My daughter-in-law owes 1.5 lakh rupees, one
son owes 4-5 lakhs, and another around 2 lakhs. We filled up the [loan waiver
application] forms by travelling to an online kendra 15 kilometres from
the village. Provided all the documents. And last night I received an SMS
saying only one person in the family would get the loan waiver.”

Khose believes the state government is playing a cruel joke on farmers.
“Their intentions are to fool people,” he says, furious. Other farmers gathered
at the tin-roofed tea stall nod in agreement. “If we have separate land and
separate accounts, why shouldn’t we be eligible? The government raised our
hopes only to shatter them.”

Raje Desle, a farm leader associated with the
Communist Party of India (Marxist), says the exclusions of the waiver will sideline
a majority of Maharashtra’s farmers. Desle was a member of the sukanu (core or steering)
committee that was formed to negotiate with the state government during the
June strike “It seems the state will not even have to waive off the Rs. 34,000
crores,” he says. (This amount was Fadnavis’ estimate of the total waiver).
“The number of caveats makes us wonder if they really want to address farm
distress.” 

The numbers show this to be true:
till the waiver application deadline of September 22, the state government had
received around 57 lakh applications, minister of state for cooperatives
Subhash Deshmukh told this reporter. Not all of these will be eligible. And this number, a report in the Times of India says, is 31 lakhs short of the original target of 89
lakh beneficiaries – a figure drawn from the State Level Bankers Committee that did not foresee the numerous eligibility norms.

Fadnavis had also said that ‘non-performing
assets’ (NPAs) as of June 2016 would get a waiver. An NPA indicates an account that has
remained dormant, when the account-holder has not repaid the loan within a
stipulated time But there is a catch, says Devidas Tuljapurkar, joint secretary of the All India Bank Employees Association: “Every year, banks review potential
NPA accounts, and convert them into term loans so their NPAs remain in check on
paper. The account then becomes a ‘performing asset’. It is an en-masse
process. A large number of farm accounts will, therefore, miss out on a loan
waiver.” 

In Jawala Zute village
in Parbhani district, Suresh Zute’s bank loan had been renewed, marking the
45-year-old farmer out of the bank’s NPAs. He owes the Parbhani District Cooperative Bank over Rs. 1 lakh, and his wife’s account too shows a loan of Rs. 1.20
lakhs. “My elder brother, Chandikadas, had a loan of over 6 lakh rupees,” says
Suresh. “His did fall in the NPA category, but the cap of 1.5 lakh rupees
ensured he could not do anything about the loan.”

03-IMG_1067-Suresh_Zute_right_with_his_cousin_brother_Lakshman-PMN-.jpg

On August 3, after realising the cotton crop has dried
up, Chandikadas committed suicide by consuming poison. Suresh’s extended family
and relatives visited the Zutes’ home in Jawala Zute. So did his two sons – studying in Selu
and Beed – and his daughter, Sarika, 18, who was also studying in Beed.

On the morning of August 8, Sarika made a cup of tea
for the visitors who had arrived to pay their respects. Then she went into an
inside room. When she did not come out for some time, a cousin knocked on the
door. And when Sarika did not respond, they broke down the door and found her
hanging from the ceiling.

In a suicide note in Marathi left in the room she
said: “Dear father, uncle committed
suicide due to crop failure. Our crops have also dried up. You had borrowed
money to sow those crops. I can’t see your financial hardship. Didi got married
last year and you have still not been able to repay that debt. I am afraid my
marriage will add to your tensions. Therefore, I am ending my life so you won’t
have to.”

Reeling from the shock of losing two family members within
a week, Suresh says he had never imagined Sarika would take such a drastic
step. “We had visited the farm two days before, where she saw the condition of the
crops,” he recalls, tears in his eyes. “I am uneducated. She would often help
me keep accounts. She knew how much we had to spend on her sister’s marriage.
Daughters are sensitive. They care for their parents like nobody else does.”

If he had been eligible for a loan waiver, Suresh
says, perhaps Sarika would not have panicked. Her suicide shook the entire
village. The tragedy compelled the tehsildar to visit the family and get the details of their bank
loans. Even though he is technically not eligible for a waiver, the tehsildar
has
verbally told Suresh not to worry about his debt. 

Suresh’s loan may well be waived off – unlike that of
many other farmers in Marathwada. But it has come at a crushing cost.

‘The state raised our hopes only to shatter them’

‘எங்களிடம் நம்பிக்கையை உருவாக்கி நொறுக்கிய அரசு’

‘କେବଳ ଭାଙ୍ଗି ଦେବାକୁ ଆମ ଭିତରେ ଆଶା ସଂଚାର କରିଥିଲା ରାଜ୍ୟ’

‘सरकारने आधी आम्हाला आशा दाखवली आणि मग तीच धुळीला मिळवली’

‘राज्य ने हमारी आशाएं केवल तोड़ने के लिए बढ़ाईं’

'মোহাৰি পেলাবলৈকেহে আমাৰ মনত আশা জগাইছিল চৰকাৰে'

’ریاست نے ہماری امیدیں صرف توڑنے کے لیے بڑھائیں‘

Jawala Zute

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


ہمارے بارے میں جانیں

پاری میں آپ کا خیرمقدم ہے

گے۔ اگر آپ کو ہمارا کام پسند ہے، تو آپ ہمارے رضاکار بن کر ہمارا تعاون کر سکتے ہیں یا ہماری مالی مدد کر سکتے ہیں، تاکہ ہم اپنا کام جاری رکھ سکیں۔

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

‘The state raised our hopes only to shatter them’

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit