BENGALURU: Even as Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy questioned why sugarcane growers were protesting at Freedom Park, farmers narrated their accounts of their inability to pay back loans that they had taken a long time ago.
Some of the loans were taken more than a decade ago. Most protesting farmers claimed to have never been beneficiaries of the loan waiver even when it was announced earlier.
Nagappa Medleri, a farmer owning eight acres of land at Ranebennur taluk in Haveri district, has not yet repaid a loan that he had borrowed 16 years ago. He had borrowed Rs 1.5 lakh to buy a tractor and has repaid Rs 2.2 lakh until now, with Rs80,000 more yet to be paid. In addition, he had borrowed a sum of Rs 2.10 lakh three years ago, which also hasn’t been repaid.
When asked why he had not been able to return the loans for so long, Medleri said, “Even when loan waivers were announced before, I have never received its benefit. In addition, we kept facing financial issues due to repeated floods, droughts and low rainfall seasons.”
Another farmer Lingappa Anaveri, who owns three acres in Ranebennur taluk, has not returned Rs1.50 lakh that he had borrowed in 2006. In 1998, though the then government had announced a loan waiver, Anaveri was forced to pay it himself, owing to pressure from the bank staff. Unfortunately for him, the loan waiver came through just eight days after this.
“Even now, when we ask the bank staff about the loan waiver, we are told that they have to wait for the implementation from the government. They do not pressurise the government like they pressurise us to return their money,” he said.
M M Patil, another farmer from Haveri taluk, said all the three political parties who had been in power — Congress, BJP and JD(S) — had not fulfilled promises of loan waiver. Patil has to pay Rs65,000 for a loan he had borrowed in 2009.