Giving farmers room to breathe
Farm loan waivers are easy to announce and hard to finish but Telangana successfully finished one. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has stated it time and again – from Assembly floors to public meetings – and reiterated that his government has kept its historic promise to waive up to Rs. 2 lakh in farm loans for every farmer family under Rythu Runa Mafi.
At 4 p.m. on a Thursday in July 2024, Rs. 6,098.93 crore landed in 11.5 lakh farmers’ loan accounts at once. There’s probably nothing about the fields that changed that evening but on paper, and possibly in hundreds of files, the debt that had weighed on those families for years was cleared.
Over the next few weeks, it was cleared for lakhs more. Round numbers hide the real story, so let’s start with the exact figures. The final tally is Rs. 20,616.89 crore for 25,35,964 farmers, or about Rs. 81,000 a family. This was relief for small borrowers. The scheme reached them more than big ones, and the people it reached are the best way to judge it, and the pace was what made it an achievement.
From promise to payout
On July 18, 2024, Rs. 6,098.93 crore went into 11.5 lakh loan accounts for loans up to Rs. 1 lakh. On July 30, another Rs. 6,190 crore reached 6.4 lakh farmers with loans up to Rs. 1.5 lakh. The Congress govt. in
the State says it moved Rs. 18,000 crore into farmers’ accounts in 27 days. While the Chief Minister termed it “our promise in action”, Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao reiterated that a total amount of Rs. 20,616.89 crore had been waived for 25,35,964 farmers.
So, why does this matter? Yes, loan waiver is a big deal for farmers, especially the small and marginal ones, but a cleared debt goes beyond the amount involved. A farmer with unpaid bank dues cannot get fresh credit and is forced to borrow from a local moneylender at very high interest rates. On the other hand, a clean account puts him back into the banking system and that is the real gift for 25 lakh families.
Why ground reality mattered…
The numbers also show where, and why, some families missed out. Banks reported 42.30 lakh loan accounts, which grouped into 31.07 lakh family accounts, and 25.36 lakh qualified after verification. So, about 5.7 lakh family accounts did not make the final list.
All these figures were arrived at based on a simple rule. The waiver was capped at Rs. 2 lakh per family, and the food security card decided who counted as a family. The State’s Director of Agriculture shared, “We collected data for the waiver from banks, not directly from farmers.”
However, bank records showed one thing while the ground reality was something else. In Malyala, a village in Siddipet district, there were farmers who shared a single ration card and realised their smaller loans were not waived. Another 1.65 lakh accounts were held back over Aadhaar mismatches.
But as shared by the agriculture minister, those errors were later corrected, and the affected farmers received the benefit in subsequent phases. Now that is a fair outcome, albeit a bit slow.
Relief today, confidence tomorrow
The State was ready to spend even more as was suggested at the launch when the Chief Minister said the government had earmarked Rs. 31,000 crore for the waiver. After each account was checked, about Rs. 20,600 crore was paid out to 25.36 lakh eligible farmers, so the money went to families who qualified. Loans up to Rs 2 lakh were cleared, and the State says Rs. 18,000 crore reached their accounts in just 27 days. The government kept its word, because the cap was stated upfront.
What happens next decides whether the relief lasts. Meanwhile, as promised, Telangana has cleared the old debt for 25 lakh+ farmers and rendered those families loan-free. When a farmer walks into the bank before the sowing season and gets a new loan confidently, without a hassle, that will be proof that Rs. 20,600 crore was well spent.