On May 5, something unusual happened. Farmers across the country displayed their strength on Twitter by making the hashtag ‘Kisan_karja_mukti’ (debt-free farmers) trend on the microblogging site. The farmers, various farmer-related organisations and the advocates who fight for these farmers wrote more than a lakh tweets and made sure the hashtag trended on Twitter. This hashtag kept trending for a very long time at the national level.
Ravindra Kajal, a Haryana-based farmer questioned the government through a Tweet and asked when it could waive off loans worth Rs 68,6090 crore of the industrialists during the lockdown, why wasn’t it doing the same for the farmers?
The farmers’ organizations across the country have been demanding a complete loan waiver for all the farmers in view of the persistent losses in farming and farmers’ suicides in the past several years. In Madhya Pradesh, the Akhil Bhartiya Kisan Sangharsh Samavaya Samiti, which was formed after the death of five farmers during the farmer agitation in Mandsaur, has been organizing a Kisan Mukti Sansad in Delhi for two consecutive years demanding a full-time loan waiver.
The farmer leaders and MPs have also proposed a complete loan waiver in the Parliament as a private bill. In the past few years, the state governments in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Karnataka have considered waiving loans from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh, but the move could not benefit lakhs of farmers. The farmers’ organizations are continuously demanding a one-time complete loan waiver.
In a tweet supporting farmers’ demand, the country’s renowned food and export policy expert Devinder Sharma said: “According to the Credit Suisse study, from 2014 to December 2019, the government has waived off a debt of about Rs 7.7 lakh crore for the corporate sector, while there is still Rs 9.10 crore pending as corporate debt lying in the non-performing asset. If only these Rs 16.88 lakh-crore were invested in agriculture sector, it would be a game changer for the Indian agriculture.”
The All India Kisan Sabha wrote that in India the farmer takes birth in debt, and dies in debt; this tradition is constantly going on with the farmers because the policies of our governments are anti-farmer.
“The farmer has no identity for the Modi government, he remains invisible,” wrote Yogendra Yadav, the national president and political analyst of Swaraj India. “These warriors who feed the nation are being completely neglected in the present war against the corona,” he added.
