11 June,2017 05:19 PM IST | Mumbai | Shashank Rao
The burning issue plaguing the Maharashtra government is the loan waiver for farmers which they have to decide by June 12 else the farmer agitation is expected to intensify
The burning issue plaguing the Maharashtra government is the loan waiver for farmers which they have to decide by June 12 else the farmer agitation is expected to intensify. The issue seems to be going out of hand as loans of farmers in Uttar Pradesh have been waived but on the other hand the same here is being resisting by the Fadnavis led government. But then Union Power and Coal minister Piyush Goyal has a different take on the same who on June 10 stated that the loan waiver is a localised issue which needs to be tackled as per the situation.
Goyal at a conference in Mumbai, told that the farmer agitation in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have arise due to improvement made in farm produce by the BJP government. And that in UP the situation was different. "At times, too much of improvement is an issue. In MP there was excess production which led to a setback. In UP, the farmers were taking new loans to repay old loans. And so loan given to farmers or its waiver is a localised issue and cannot be duplicated without going into the root cause," said Piyush Goyal.
Couple of days ago Union Home minister Rajnath Singh had blamed the Congress for the farmer mess. Goyal too took a dig at Congress as he criticized their decision taken in 2008 for a pan-India loan waiver given to farmers without actually studying the problem state-wise. He also blamed certain political leaders for instigating farmers which is causing this strike. Couple of days ago Congress president Rahul Gandhi led a nation wide opposition against the BJP over the on-going farmer issue.
Over the last few days, the state government is struggling to diffuse the farmer strike which is affecting the vegetable and fruit supply to APMC and retail markets. The farmers are allegedly committing suicide over inability to pay off their loans and so they are demanding loan waiver. This year, more than 835 farmers have committed suicide until the month of April, with March seeing the highest toll of 235 and in 2016, there have been 3052 farmer suicide.
