After the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, it is the turn of the `71,000 crores farm loan waiver, announced in 2008 during UPA-I, to come under the Comptroller and Auditor General of India scanner.
The efficiency of the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Relief Scheme, 2008, which facilitated the Congress Party’s return to power at the Centre for a second time in 2009, will be comprehensively examined by the CAG to find out whether the eligible beneficiaries were actually granted debt waivers and debt relief by the implementing banks and institutions, as intended by the government and the Parliament.
“The CAG’s performance audit of the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Relief Scheme, 2008 will show whether genuine farmers benefited from the scheme or not,” said CPI(M) MP Basudeb Acharia, who is the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture.
Mr Acharia further said a CAG examination was necessary as around 65 per cent of the agri-credit usually goes to the big farmers, leaving the small ones high and dry. In the light of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee enhancing agri-credit target from `3,75,000 crores to `4,75,000 crores in the Budget 2011-12, Mr Acharia said an inquiry into the farm loan waiver would help the government keep a tab on the fresh disbursals.
The CPI(M) MP further said that the farm loan waiver scheme, 2008, which expected to benefit around 40 million farmers, did not have any mitigating effect on a large number of farmers who had taken loans from private money lenders.
Under attack from the Left parties, both within and outside the Parliament, for ignoring the plight of the farmers, then finance minister P. Chidambaram had announced an agriculture loan waiver to the tune of `71,000 crores for the debt trapped farmers in 2008. The scheme covered farmers with less than two hectares of farmland.
The move, along with the rural job plan MGNREGS, had benefited the Congress party significantly in the 2009 general elections and led to UPA-II. Concerned over reports of widespread corruption in its implementation, the CAG will also examine the MGNREGS, which has consumed over `74,000 crores in wages alone since it was rolled out in 2006.