Panel wants to put small farmers on govt’s welfare policy radar

New Delhi, September 3: Coming down heavily on the UPA Government for its failure to address inequalities faced by small and marginal farmers by its policies and programmes, a government panel has recommended formation of an institutional mechanism — Farmers’ Debt Relief Commission (FDRC) — in states facing agrarian distress.

According to a report ‘Proposal for a Special Programme for Marginal and Small Farmers’, prepared by Arjun Sengupta-led National Commission on Enterprises in Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), a large majority of small and marginal farmers is out of the ambit of government’s loan-waiver scheme, announced in the Union Budget 2008-09.

Of small and marginal farmers, with per capita land holding of less than two hectares, only 13.6 to 21.8 per cent have access to formal credit. Since a majority of them lie outside the institutional credit framework, they cannot lay claim to the UPA government’s populist farm loan-waiver scheme.

The commission has recommended that priority sector lending guidelines should be revised and a target of 10 per cent needs to be fixed for this segment. RBI, it says, should separately monitor the credit-low progress. Even government’s minimum support price has not been successful as its coverage in terms of crops and area is small, says the report. The report will be presented to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after it receives advisory board approval on Monday.

The report points out that average outstanding loan per farmer household was Rs 12,585 in 2002-03, amounting to a total outstanding loan of approximately Rs 943 billion for small and marginal households alone. The number of such farmers has steadily increased with little difference in their lot. Their contribution to total value of crop output exceeds 50 per cent nationally. Given the low agricultural growth during 1997-98 and 2003-04, impact of this crisis was acutely felt by small and marginal farmers.

In this backdrop, NCEUS has recommended a special package for small and marginal farmers in form of FDRC. For formation of debt-relief commissions, it has asked central government to provide guidelines and assistance to specific states. Further, central government could extend relief package to state commissions on 75:25 basis. These state commissions would examine and institute measures to ensure institutional credit to small and marginal farmers.

The panel has also recommended a special programme that will include preparation of a blueprint for the development of marginal and small farmers. This plan will assess the numbers of such farmers, document the problems faced by them and suggest locally relevant development strategies, sensitive to the growing feminisation of the workforce and set quantitative targets. Emphasis will be on convergence of the small and marginal farmers’ requirements with all existing programmes.

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.