The Hindu Business Line : The ways of politics

The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, addressing a meeting in his Lok Sabha constituency the other day, said that the farm-loan waiver should be treated as a "national debt", the beneficiaries being a section of society which "feeds us". A very neat formulation this, and a very appropriate one too, based on the ageold truth that those who grow our food in effect provide us with the basic bodily nourishment which, in turn, allows us to do our own jobs in the various walks of life to which each one of us belong.

PRECIOUS SEGMENT

History has taught us that without a vibrant farming community no society can subsist for an indefinite period of time, unless of course it simply cannot produce its own food because of unhelpful geographical conditions and, therefore, has recourse to other areas of production in which it excels and exchanges the products of that sphere for its food imports.

Being the vast geographical entity that it is, India is a mix of barren areas and extremely fertile tracts; it also has a huge population to support in terms of food requirements. What this means, briefly, is that the farming community is a precious segment of the population, the inference being that the segment should be given all the support it deserves to increase the right sort of production so that, essentially, the nation is self-sufficient in its food supplies.

This is what the Minister would like the world to appreciate if his "national debt" construction on the loan waiver scheme is to make good sense. There is no problem in agreeing with him because what he has said is nothing new. Indeed, he cannot be faulted on the way he has dressed the Budget initiative of the leadership of the Congress party, just as those who would like a political justification to be applied to the timing of the measure cannot be pulled up for talking through their hat!

WHITHER THE `CRISIS'?

The issue, in fact, is simple. The UPA Government has been in power during the past four years, and the farming community has been around from time immemorial. The waiving of farm loans to the extent of Rs 60,000 crore is no joke, and there must have been a situation of crisis developing to have made the Government sit up and look at the plight of the farmers.

What is this precise "crisis" that has forced the Government to take such a massive financial measure and has led to the invocation of the "national debt" argument? If there is no such "crisis" and the step is merely a part of the UPA Government's Common Minimum Programme, one would have expected the "national debt" to have been imposed on the nation in the very first year of the Government's life.

But that has not been the case, and there is no such mind-boggling "crisis" on hand to have occasioned the loan waiver. So there must be some other reason for the "great deal" offered to the indebted farmers (which, incidentally, does not cover the worst hit in the farming community) for which the nation has to pay. Even the smallest farmer knows what the real reason is, namely, the garnering of votes for primarily the Lok Sabha elections, which are round the corner.

In other words, a "national debt" has been run up to persuade a large chunk of the electorate to vote for the Congress party, a proposition the best test for which is whether it would have been allowed if the election code of conduct was already in force.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

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