Resentment simmers over 5-acre clause

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.