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Patna, (Bihar Times): Contrary to the stand taken on the railway budget Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar, welcomed the waiving of loan to farmers as announced in the budget speech by Union Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, on February 29. However, he hastened to add that farmers of Bihar are hardly going to be benefited by this announcement.

  
The chief minister, however, did not hesitate to dub it as election budget.

The problem with Bihar is that most of the farmers are very small and do not rely on the bank loan. In fact the banks are hesitant in providing loans to them. The poor CD ratio––just 31 per cent––of the state confirms this fact. Instead the farmers rely on the small money-lenders and mahajans for loans. Thus they are not going to be benefited much by the new announcements.

The practice of taking bank loans is more prevalent in the cash-crop growing states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh etc. It is in these states that farmers are committing suicide because they are unable to return the loan.

 

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Comments..

I do not agree with him on this Budget.  In this regard, I would say that this kind of people friendly, commonmen friendly, lower/middle class friendly and of course poor farmers friendly budget came first time in India. I congratulate P. Chidambram and Hon'ble Prime Minister (both economist as well) for 2008-2009 Budget. I would appreciate if it is implemented with full sincerity, honesty and responsibility. One could see the "RED FACES" of NDA leaders namely Mr. L. K. Advani and ex-MP and present Rajya Sabha member Yashwant Sinha's face. They had "NO WORDS" to express in the Parliament. They were stunned to see the announcement made by Chidambramjee. I am sure all opposition parties like previous years wanted to jeopardize Parliament's proceedings with their slogans/words "Haay Haay", but they were amazed to hear the "Master Stroke" played by Hon'ble Finance Minister. I congratulate again Govt. of India for their courage to waive 60,000 crore farmers loan at one go.

Also, I am delighted to note that finally deck for IIT, Patna has been cleared by P. Chidambram on his Budget speech and a Central University will be set-up soon in Bihar. A good and positive move for Bihar and this will benefit Jharkhand students as well.

It was certainly a Brilliant, Amazing and Outstanding Budget.

MOHAMMAD IMRAN 

imraninsaudi@yahoo.com