The loan waiver has generated more bitterness than happiness among the farmers in Surendranagar due to an ironic twist, in which long-term loan defaulters benefit, but not those who have been breaking their backs trying to pay off their debts regularly. Sarji Raisinh a small farmer from Nanikathi village has been lucky. His debt of Rs 40,000— which he had borrowed from Kheti Seva Sahkari Mandali four years ago—has been waived. “I did not have enough money to pay society and I did not,” he admits. “While many others borrow from money lenders to pay off banks, I decided not to and that saved me a lot of money. Now many of us will think twice before repaying loans.”

A second problem arises from the fact that farmers with more than 5 acres of land do not qualify for the waiver—but this does not take into account that a piece of land registered under the name of one person, usually a father, often gets divided among a number of siblings. Jamal Sapra, a tribal farmer from the same village as Sarji, got the short end of the stick. “We have 11 acres of land registered under my father’s name, but since we are three brothers, our per head land holding comes to less than 4 acres. Now with this 5-acre clause, we cannot benefit from the scheme,” he says, adding that from now on, he will not be as conscientious about repaying loan—something he did regularly, even borrowing from money lenders. “This has been a common practice here just to keep our credit record clean, but now with this precedence set, many of us will not repay the loan installments any more,” he says.