The Rs60,000-crore central waiver notwithstanding, banks in Bihar are allegedly still using strong-arm tactics to recover loans from farmers.
Despite the Rs60,000-cr loan waiver, cultivators in several states continue to suffer
PATNA: The Rs60,000-crore central waiver notwithstanding, banks in Bihar are allegedly still using strong-arm tactics to recover loans from farmers.
The matter was recently raised in the state assembly, following which chief minister Nitish Kumar directed the chief and finance secretaries to apply brakes on the forcible recovery.
If state agriculture minister Narendra Singh is to be believed, the Bihar component of the all-India loan waiver is not more than Rs1,000 crore. Replying to a debate in the assembly, the minister said nationalised banks had extended so little credit to farmers in Bihar in the last five years, that they would hardly benefit from the waiver.
Rural development minister Narendra Narayan said it was a known fact that banks in Bihar had failed to deliver on the loan disbursement front. He said the state could garner only 0.9% of the total loans disbursed by nationalised banks in 2006-07.
Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who also holds the finance portfolio, said the credit-deposit ratio in Bihar was only 32%, much lower than the national average. He said farmers in Bihar were largely dependent on non-institutional financers in the absence of rural credit schemes of nationalised banks and the harassment involved in credit disbursement. As a consequence, “goonda banks” have flourished in the state, Modi said.
Union finance minister P Chidambaram was also apprised of these “goonda banks”, after which he instructed the banking authorities to improve the credit-deposit ratio in the state and ensure easy disbursement of loans to farmers.
But his instructions were yet to be implemented in letter and spirit, Modi rued. However, the state was trying to improve the lot of farmers by preparing a Rs5,000-crore road map for the agriculture sector, he said.
sanjay_s@dnaindia.net 
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