Situation remains tense in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as strike enters 4th day
Chandigarh: 7.4.2017
In a strongly worded press note issued here today, Bhupinder Singh Mann, ex- MP, National President BKU and Chairman All India Kisan Coordination Committee condemned the statement of RBI Governor Urjit Patel that farm loan waiver undermines honest credit culture.
Condemning the statement, he described the statement of RBI governor as insensitive and inhumane. He said that the loan on farmers has been forced on their heads due to faulty policies against agriculture sector.
Mann questioned the RBI Governor “doesn’t massive loan waiver to big corporate running into lakhs of crores not bad economics?” Recently the banks had waived off loan to the tune of 1.14 lakh crores of a few corporate houses.
He also referred to Parliamentary Committee report in first week of March 2017 in which it was brought out that 6.8 lakh crores of banks is on verge of becoming NPA. Out of this 70% is due towards big corporate houses while such loan on poor farmers is just about 1%.
He questioned Patel that if the banks were forced to pay 8% on FD and forced to lend at 4%, will the banks survive? This is exactly the situation of farmers of India who are forced to sell their produce at below the cost of production.
“No enterprise or business can survive in such condition when selling price is lower than the cost of production. I hope the RBI governor understands this economics”.
The KCC chief said “the farmers do not need any alms or favours from Governments. We need justified and adequate prices of our crops. It is because of the faulty, prejudiced and unfair policies against farm sector that has pushed farmers into penury. What is the fault of a farmer who is forced to commit suicide due to treacherous anti farmers policies? The policies have basically focussed to pull out capital from agriculture sector to other sectors.
Mann referred to the report of Task force on agriculture headed by renowned farm economist and leader . Sharad Joshi . As per the report of this high powered task force constituted by the then PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, agriculture sector is subjected to negative subsidy and every year capital is squeezed from this primary sector and transferred to other sectors of economy. Till 1994-1995 an amount of Rs 1.4 lakh crore had been squeezed. This cumulative amount of negative subsidy (transferred capital) would be very high in the last decade.
