Fresh from its electoral drubbing in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the Congress party is eagerly embracing suggestions made by many well-meaning individuals to do something concrete for farmers. Many, including the agriculture minister and the chief ministers of Maharashtra and Punjab have believed that if a second green revolution is to happen it is necessary to remove the burden of indebtedness from the heads of farmers. Now the Centre is reportedly planning to implement a Rs 30,000 crore farm loan relief package. Doing so would amount to missing the trees for the wood.

The PM’s special package of Rs 3,750 crore and the Maharashtra government’s separate package of Rs 1,075 crore for the six districts of Vidarbha have already been trying fitfully to help the farmers but the results do not seem to be encouraging. These packages include a slew of measures to relieve agrarian distress ranging from a moratorium on loan repayment to watershed development to the distribution of cows, farm implements and so on.

However, the one thing which the government has studiously avoided doing is to allow people in distress to decide for themselves how best they need succour. At best, this indicates on the part of officialdom, a well meaning but hardly credible belief in their own omniscience. At worst it indicates their willingness to use the name of the farmer to distribute largesse to a wide variety of interest groups whose formally stated goal is to make a private profit.

Debt relief constitutes a large portion of these packages. Many commentators have pointed out that bailing out the banks by writing off their NPAs and one-time loan write-off schemes can have little permanent impact on the economic status of the farmer. Improving farm income and risk management are far more important.

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