Yavatmal (Maharashtra), Dec 27 (IANS) Grieving but grateful farmers of Vidarbha in eastern Maharashtra recalled the time when the late Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visited the distressed region in 2006, which finally led to the implementation of the first-ever all-India farm loans write-off way back in 2008, a leading activist said here on Friday.
Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit was prompted by an abrupt spurt in farmers’ suicides from February 2004, when the Centre permitted duty-free bumper imports of cheap cotton, triggering the dance of death in the farmlands.
“I had sent requests to the government to pay attention to the ongoing ‘genocide’ among the peasantry due to the massive recession, crop failures owing to rampant use of BT-II technology, certain ill-conceived policies of the previous NDA regime of the late PM A. B. Vajpayee and other related factors,” Vidarbha farm activist and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Kishore Tiwari told IANS.
A concerned Dr. Singh took cognisance and directed the then National Farmers Commission Chairman Dr. M.S. Swaminathan to tour Vidarbha (October 2005) and submit his detailed report after a ground assessment.
The situation in the Vidarbha region became especially critical after some short-sighted policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Vajpayee government at the Centre, which apparently snowballed into a major crisis in the cotton heartlands within barely two-three years.
“After Dr. Swaminathan’s tour and his report, Dr. Singh personally came on an unprecedented two-day study visit to Vidarbha (July 2006), the first ever by an Indian PM plunging into the country’s hotbed of farmers’ suicides in Yavatmal district, besides adjoining Wardha, understood in depth the prevailing distress with his own eyes, leaving a permanent impression on the poor agriculturists here,” said Tiwari.
Dr. Singh went around, met the ordinary tillers, Tiwari and other activists, discussed the core issues affecting them in some of the worst-hit regions and then announced a slew of reliefs under a special Rs 4,000 crore Vidarbha Farm Package, for the affected (Vidarbha) districts like Yavatmal, Wardha, Amravati, Akola, Washim and Buldhana.
“I have been travelling for the last two days in Vidarbha to see at first hand the distress of farmers in this region. I had an opportunity to interact with families and widows of farmers who had committed suicide and also heard many farmers who were in acute distress. The interactions have left a deep impression on my mind. The farmers who form the backbone of the economy of these districts, are in acute distress forcing many of them to take the extreme step of committing suicide when they see all avenues for relief blocked,” said Dr. Singh after ending his visit.
Tiwari claimed that the visit of Dr. Singh — who was accompanied by then Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and other bigwigs — was partly fueled by complaints against the (then Congress-led state government), bureaucracy and banks which seemed to block all central aid to the farmers.
Dr. Singh’s visit – when he met young and old farmers, their spouses and kids, as also some widows – and the ineptness of the state government in implementing the Special Vidarbha Farm Package, led to the subsequent first-ever, historic, pan-India farm loans write-off amounting to a staggering Rs 71,000 crore in 2008.
Tiwari attributes the return to power of Congress under Dr. Singh (2009 Lok Sabha elections) for his extremely ‘farmer-friendly’ policies and initiatives – unlike now under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime, when the tillers are treated as enemies of the state whenever they raise their voice or take to the streets.
The peasants cherish fond memories of how the calm Dr. Singh, along with his senior team of ministers and bureaucrats from the state and the Centre, did a silent but surgical analysis of the entire gamut of issues plaguing the agriculture sector, and then announced the massive nationwide loan waiver that is now part of farmers’ folklore.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: qnajmi@gmail.com)
–IANS
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