NEW DELHI: A day after farmers laid siege to the national capital seeking loan waivers and better prices for their produce, NITI Aayog officials said such demands won’t really help small tillers, including those engaged in tenancy farming.
Officially, 12 per cent of the tillers are tenant farmers. Waivers don’t reach many due to lack of documents and Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts.
“Punjab’s example has shown that tenant, small and marginal farmers don’t get the benefit of loan waivers. Many farmers don’t have land titles and necessary conditions for the direct benefit transfer of government aid. Similar cases have been reported from UP as well,” said an agricultural expert who drafted the roadmap for Punjab on loan waiver.
“Tenant farmers till 34% of the total cultivable land in Andhra, 25% in Punjab, 21% in Bihar, 17% in Odisha, 14% in Bengal and 15% in Haryana. The number of tenant farmers has risen in recent years owing to migration of people from rural to urban areas,” said a senior official of NITI Aayog.
While political outfits compete to win the hearts of farmers, reforms which could have addressed their woes skip the agenda of governance.
“NITI Aayog reached out to all state governments with the model land leasing law, which could have provided recognition to tenant farmers to access benefits and loans. Yet, only MP and Uttarakhand could adopt the legislation so far,” the official added.
Ironically, tenant farmers face the fury of weather in times of unseasonal rains and hailstorm while the compensation cheques announced by the government reach people living in cities as land-holdings are in their names in official records, the NITI Aayog official added.
“In the absence of lease documents acceptable in government records, tenant farmers continue to be out of the formal credit access and farm subsidies, and access loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rates,” said the official. While the farmers are the backbone of Indian agriculture, it seems nobody is really bothered about their problems, he added.