The farm loan waiver scheme almost across the finish line

 Bangalore: The much awaited farm loan waiver scheme by the JD(S)-Congress government, which is a pet project of HD Kumaraswamy the chief minister is currently under attack by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At a rally which was held in Uttar Pradesh Modi has claimed that the government had made big promises to farmers, but is only offering “lollipops” now. Modi also alleged that the scheme has only helped 800 farmers.

Munish Moudgil, the commissioner of survey, settlement and land records has said that, “Payments are being made electronically every week. By the end of the month, we will repay all loans due until December 2018 of those farmers who have submitted all the necessary details.”

The officials in the state cooperation department have said that the implementation of the scheme was delayed because of the introduction of special software not due to shortage of funds as it is being alleged by the opposition parties. “The idea was to weed out bogus claims in the initial stages itself. It’s paying rich dividend.” said Moudgil, the architect of the technology.

“In many cases, secretaries have siphoned of funds by fudging figures without farmers realising the fraud. There are also instances of farmers availing waivers by submitting fake record of rights, tenancy and crops (RTCs) and three or four members of a family obtaining waivers using the same RTC, but different survey numbers,” an official said.

The new software is capable of eliminating such frauds as the entire process is linked to the Aadhaar. PACS have also been asked to submit the information of farmers online. The two databases, the one that is submitted by farmers and the other by PACS which were matched and cross-checked by using Aadhaar and the ration card database.

The software, is expected to be a model which will be disbursing the benefits of the government in the future, as it has come as a boon for the government led by HD Kumaraswamy since it has been struggling to generate the revenue which was needed to implement its scheme.