Does Yogi Adityanath foresee a Madhya Pradesh-like situation in UP?
Alarmed by the violent farmer protests in Madhya Pradesh, where police firing claimed five lives, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has begun to take preventive measures to avert a similar situation at home.
What is being feared is the manifestation of anger against the failure of the UP government to fulfil its commitment to waive agricultural loans of as many as 86 lakh poor farmers.
Evidently, ever since Yogi made his first promise to waive the loans, his main worry has been to muster up resources to fulfil the promise. He was, however, left high and dry when the Union government clearly expressed its inability to extend any kind of help to the state in this regard. And no sooner than Union finance minister Arun Jaitley ruled out the possibility of providing any financial assistance to enable the state government to waive the loans of the order of about Rs 36,000 crore than Yogi found himself worrying. Now the trouble in Madhya Pradesh is understood to be giving him sleepless nights.
While his finance machinery has been trying to find ways and means to raise resources so that he does not have a loss of face, Yogi found it prudent to take certain pre-emptive measures to reassure the farmers that he actually meant business. And lest they start wondering whether they are being taken for a ride, the UP chief minister has urged the nationalised banks not to press for recovery of loans.
Two days after the violence and arson in MP, where farmers accused the Shivraj Chouhan government of not fulfilling its promises, Yogi hurriedly convened a meeting of top finance and agriculture officials in Lucknow. He has asked them to hold state-level meetings with senior bank representatives to ensure that recovery notices are not issued to the farmers until the state government passes its budget for the current financial year in which he proposes to make a provision for offsetting farmers’ loans upto a limit of Rs 1 lakh.
District magistrates are now being told to ensure the order is followed up and reaches the villages. “We must see to it that 86 lakh marginal farmers are given loan waiver certificates soon after our Budget for 2017-18 is passed with adequate provision for the amount by the state assembly,” the chief minister told the meeting that was attended by the finance minister, chief secretary, principal finance secretary and principal agriculture secretary.
Yogi has also urged the farmers to complete the "Know Your Customer" formalities essential for their respective bank accounts.
Meanwhile, the state’s finance experts need to enhance resources in such a way that Uttar Pradesh is able to raise the humongous sum of Rs 36,000 crore so as to pay off the banks on behalf of the farmers.
“We are confident of doing it by cutting down wasteful expenditure and by plugging loopholes that are a source of pilferage,” a top official of the finance department said. While much brainstorming was underway to find ways to gather the amount, there was also some serious discussion on how to execute the loan waiver scheme in a phased manner.
“But we must ensure that there are no loose ends and that the banks do not harass the farmers by initiating the recovery of the loans; that will send a wrong message and leave them confused,” he added.
Significantly, the Opposition has already been building a campaign against the ruling BJP to spread the word that the state government has no intention of keeping its promise of waiving farmer loans. Several Opposition parties, including the Congress, Samajwadi Party as well as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) launched the campaign soon after the Union finance minister’s declaration that the Centre was in no position to share the UP government’s burden on account of the loan waiver.