No more loan waivers for you, Sharad Pawar tells Vidarbha farmers

It's not every day that Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar travels to Vidarbha. So there was an expected buzz around his visit in Akola on Saturday, particularly among the farmers.

But Pawar disappointed the beleaguered cotton farmers, staring at crop losses this year due to excessive rains, after two successive years of drought. "Don't expect any loan waiver now," Pawar told a gathering in Akola, 280km from Nagpur in western Vidarbha, in the presence of the chief minister Ashok Chavan and a battery of other Maharashtra ministers. "The government is with you, but this mentality of not repaying bank loans is not a good habit," he said. "It's time you change it."

This was the NCP chief's first visit to the region in several months.
Even while he asked the farmers to cultivate the habit of repaying loans regularly, there are reports that the Democratic Front government  has approved interest waiver for floriculture farmers and is sitting on a proposal to waive loans worth crores of rupees for the wineries in Pawar's home turf of western and northern Maharashtra.

Loan recovery in Vidarbha over two years has been dismal, owing to crop losses due to drought. This year it got reflected in poor crop loan disbursement through formal network; the banks did not give loans to farmers, who had defaulted on loan repayment.