A farmer works in his field

Mumbai, April 6: The government has set in motion the process to implement the farm loan waiver a month after the budget bonanza even as debt-driven suicides continued to haunt the stretch from Vidarbha to Andhra Pradesh.

A top Maharashtra official said the government was trying to complete the groundwork by the end of April to enable farmers to apply for fresh loans just before the kharif season.

“We have started the process of collecting information from banks. They have to provide us the information through Reserve Bank of India and Nabard, the nodal agencies. After getting the data, we will issue guidelines to the banks, which in turn will inform the farmers that their loans have been written off,” the official said.

The government is keen to send the signal that the waiver is for real as suicides continue abated. At least 78 farmers have killed themselves in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region and 73 in Andhra since February 29, the day finance minister P. Chidambaram announced the proposal in his budget.

The complete loan waiver is limited to the 3 crore marginal and small farmers owning up to 2 hectares (4.9 acres). Those with over 2 hectares — around 1 crore farmers — will get a 25 per cent discount for a one-time settlement.

The majority of the farmers who committed suicide this month owned more than 5 acres and would thus have to cough up 75 per cent of the loan amount. Many of them are in the grip of moneylenders, like Ramakrishna Reddy, 21, of Prakasam district in Andhra, whose family of four has around 10 acres. Reddy’s mother consumed pesticide on Friday after she was told by the moneylender to pay up Rs 72,000 by Sunday.

The government wants to ensure the farmers don’t have to go to the moneylenders for cash. “Though June 30 is the deadline, we would like the banks to inform the farmer as early as possible that his loan has been waived, and that he can take a fresh loan immediately. We hope to do it by the end of April so that farmers are able to take a fresh loan for the kharif season,” said the Maharashtra official, who did not wish to be named.

The kharif season starts with the southwest monsoon, when Vidarbha’s cotton farmers, who depend entirely on rains for water, require hard cash in hand by June. Many end up at the moneylenders’ doors when they do not have ready cash to purchase seeds and fertilisers for farming. Only 3 per cent of Vidarbha has irrigated farming, the rest depend on the monsoon.

Sources said the Centre is trying to work out a political consensus for providing 31 suicide-prone districts with a blanket waiver on loans up to Rs 50,000 irrespective of land holdings. Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh yesterday said the state had placed this demand before the Centre.

“The finance minister has directed that all such suggestions should be taken into account when the states issue guidelines to the banks,” was all that the official was willing to say.

The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, an NGO which monitors the death count, recorded 78 suicides in March, up from 68 in February.

“Most of the farmers committing suicide are in their late 20s and early 30s. Several of them own less than two hectares and could be eligible for the loan waiver. But neither has the waiver been implemented nor did the state budget announce any scheme to provide farmers with either secondary sources of income or higher prices for their cotton and other produce. They are losing hope,” said Kishore Tiwari, convener of the NGO.

In Andhra, at least 73 farmers have committed since the budget, though unofficial numbers put the figure at around 110.

The toll was the highest in the southern coastal district of Prakasam, where 17 farmers took their lives.

Almost all of them owned around seven acres of land, which made them ineligible for the complete waiver.