The Centre is all set to launch a special drive in order to reach out to farmers with the Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) by doubling the footprint from 6.95 crores to almost 14 crore active cards just before the general elections. This is being done to bring all landholding cultivators under one roof, i.e. to bring them within the institutional credit system.
Here the intention is to issue KCCs to eligible farmers within a span of two weeks of submission of application forms.
An advisory ha been issued last week by the Indian Banks Association to all the banks asking them to waive processing, documentation, inspection, ledger folio charges and all other service charges for KCC and crop loans up to Rs 3 lakh. It is believed that this move might save a farmer applying for KCC Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000.
Agriculture secretary, Sanjay Aggarwal said that the agriculture ministry has written to all states and Union Territories to seek their cooperation. The idea here is to saturate farmers with KCCs so that they can access institutional credit and avail interest subvention.
Sudhir Panwar, president of Kisan Jagriti Manch (works among farmers in Uttar Pradesh), said that the decision to waive off various service charges is an appreciable move. It will save Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 of an applicant if adopted by banks. The complications involved in it would force farmers to hire lawyers to approach banks for KCC.
He also mentioned that the credit is provided to farmers to purchase inputs. Interest over here is not linked to inflation, thereby even four percent interest is too high for them. He argued that if the government waives off interest on crop loan fully, the demand of loan waiver will be completely gone
Image Credit: The Indian Express
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