Farm Loan Waiver Imperative, Says Chidambaram

Bengaluru: Defending farm loan waiver, senior Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday said freeing farmers from debt was imperative due to agrarian crisis across the country. “Farm loan waiver is imperative in the present scenario. As the average indebtedness of farmer families is Rs 90,000-1 lakh, how can they ever pay such loans,” Chidambaram told at a news conference in the party’s state unit office here. As promised in the Congress poll manifestos, Chidambaram said the party’s newly-elected governments in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have responded to the farmers’ distress by waiving their loans. Lamenting that in one district of Maharashtra alone, over 100 farmers committed suicide, the former minister said of the 10-crore farmer families in the country, 5.28-crore were small and marginal farmers. (IANS)

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