Chandigarh, March 29: There is need to regulate and fix the per acre credit limit that banks sanction to loanee farmers and bring in a legislation to act against those banks and financial institutions that extend credit to farmers higher than the limit.These are among the 69 key recommendations made by the five-member fact-finding committee of the Vidhan Sabha, set up last year to find the reasons for high incidence of suicide by farmers and farm workers.
The setting up of a debt settlement and reconciliatory commission, fixing minimum price for majority of crops, having an agriculture policy on the lines of industrial policy to help improve share of agriculture sector in state’s GDP, strengthening the cooperative banking sector, which provides cheaper loans to farmers, by shifting all government bank accounts and salary accounts of government staff in cooperative banks are some of the other key recommendations.
It has also been recommended that the government come up with a policy to restrict expenditure on social functions; set up agro industry; and provide better career opportunities to children of farmers. The committee, headed by Congress MLA Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, presented its report in the House on the last day of the Budget session on Wednesday.
Akali Dal MLA Harinder Pal Singh Chandumajra, who was also part of this committee, demanded a debate on the issue. When Speaker Rana KP Singh overruled his plea on the ground that the MLA’s dissenting note was included in the report, and that debates on the Vidhan Sabha committee reports are not held, Akali MLAs rushed to the well of the House and raised slogans against the government.
Chandumajra later told The Tribune, that in the final meeting of the committee on March 22, he had asked the chairman to include the reasons for the sudden spurt in the suicide cases after March 2017. “The Congress government had gone back on its promise of a complete debt waiver to farmers. The farmers had stopped repaying their loans in hope of a debt waiver,” he said, adding that defaulter farmers became ineligible for more loans for fertilisers from cooperative societies.
The committee also recommended the following steps to ameliorate the lot of indebted farmers and farm labourers: The families of farmers should be given all social security pensions from the date of suicide; their debt be taken over by the government; Rs 1 lakh should be immediately given to the families; the remaining aid be given in the form of fixed deposits; the condition of minimum 2.5-acre landholding and annual income of over Rs 60,000 for widow pension and dependent pension be waived; and the government should ensure that the education of the victims’ children is not affected due to financial reasons.
Those families who do not have pucca houses and have no wherewithal to construct these should be included in government schemes to facilitate their housing need. No condition of time should be kept for seeking compensation from the government.
Source Tribune India
