Hyderabad: Lakhs of people, thousands of vehicles, hundreds of security men, scores of industrialists, VIPs, bureaucrats, 27 aircraft, about 50 special trains, hundreds of buses, 18 Union ministers, eight chief ministers, movie stars including Rajinikanth and Pawan Kalyan and one Governor – Nara Chandrababu Naidu has spared no effort to make his swearing-in as the first chief minister of the brand new Andhra Pradesh a mega, memorable event. As he took oath at 7.27 pm today – the venue is a specially-decked up 70-acre ground on the National Highway No 5 – he also had one mega promise to keep. Among the three important files he was expected to sign was one pertaining to the staggering Rs 80,000-crore farm loan waiver.
Courtesy: ibn live
Being sworn in as chief minister isn’t new to Naidu. He has done it twice. But surely, he isn’t going to be gripped by a sense of déjà vu. This victory is a culmination of a 10-year-long toil and an unrelenting fight.
The unquestioned supremo of the 32-year-old Telugu Desam Party, Naidu, the one-time backroom boy, always ready at the beck and call of the Telugu Desam patriarch NT Rama Rao, may have lost power, but not his connect with people. He made sure that all are invited and none is ignored to his swearing-in ceremony. He personally called up his bête noire YS Jaganmohan Reddy who will be the first Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly of the newly carved state. That Jagan reacted like a typical Opposition leader and pooh-poohed the extravagance is a different story.
While Jagan cried hoarse alleging that Naidu was spending Rs 30 crore of public money for the swearing-in event management alone, Naidu’s son, the Stanford-educated Lokesh, retorted and dubbed it as an investment for drawing attention of the investor community globally. Had the result tilted a bit and Jagan been enthroned, would he have done it differently? Certainly, not. The roles would just have reversed.
The farm loan waiver was like a genie that granted electoral victory to the Telugu Desam Party. Now, will Naidu be able to cap the genie or let it turn out into a monster becomes interesting to watch.
While the modalities for the implementation of the loan waiver are yet to be worked out, Naidu is firm on appending his first signature as the chief minister at the appointed hour of 8.35 pm on the file only to reinforce his unwavering commitment to the poll promise.
The total loans obtained by farmers in undivided Andhra Pradesh as on March 31, 2014 amounts to Rs 1,37,176 crore. The short-term farm loan amounts to Rs. 84,283 crore, while the other term loans obtained by farmers in the united Andhra Pradesh aggregates to Rs 37,527 crore, according to official statistics. The self-help groups owe Rs 22,773 crore to banks, while indirect agricultural loans work out to Rs 15,366 crore.
The liability of Andhra Pradesh, the residuary part after apportioning 10 districts to carve out Telangana, is also not a small figure. In fact, Chandrababu Naidu, while reiterating his commitment to waive the farm loans, said that it was a promise made during his ‘Vasthunnaa mee kosam’ padayatra, which he successfully completed across the state in 2013. The agricultural loans work out to Rs 73,408 crore and the loans of self-help groups come to Rs 14,204 crore. In all, it totals Rs 87,612 crore.
This is the amount the cash-strapped new state, which is beginning its account with a Rs 15,900-crore revenue deficit, will have to shell out for just two poll promises, not to talk of building a new capital city.
Can the researcher of Economics in Chandrababu Naidu let the politician within him overtake the former? Will the man, who never entertained even garlands during his earlier nine-year stint, turn to ostentation?
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao promised waiver of farm loans up to a sum of Rs 1 lakh. But then, he has added an asterisk with fine print reading that farm loans taken only between June 2013 and June 2014 would be covered under waiver. The farm loans in Telangana amounted to Rs 40,994 crore, of which the loans that were up to Rs 1 lakh accounted for Rs 26,020 crore.
This will surely levy a heavy burden on Telangana too which has a revenue surplus of Rs 7,510 crore. The star-mark brought in by KCR slashes the economic liability to Rs 12,000 crore on the new state, but has surely enhanced his political liability manifold.
Already, three farmers committed suicide and four of them died of heart attack on learning that they may not be covered under the farm loan waiver scheme in Telangana.
Realising that the poll promise is turning out to be a nemesis for his Telangana counterpart in less than a week of assuming the reins of the State, Chandrababu Naidu has chosen to tread a cautious path. He will form a committee under former IRDA chairman CS Rao’s stewardship to study the state finances, the poll promises, the total liability that would widen the hole in the books of the exchequer, and then propose the way out.
Naidu is said to be working on a formula of securing Reserve Bank of India’s guarantee for the farm loans for a moratorium of more than 10 years by issuing bonds. Would the RBI accede to this proposal as it violates its own limits on state loans? The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act 2003 would also stand between the state exchequer and the mega poll promise.
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar through his column in Sunday Times sharply criticized the idea of waiver of farm loans and advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bluntly refuse to write off the loans as promised by a government of his ally. And, he went to the extent of advising the PM to say “nothing doing” to Naidu, else warned him to be prepared to bear the smudge of drifting away from his much-touted good governance slogan and turning his own ideology into a burlesque.
The credit-deposit ratio (CRD) of banks in Andhra Pradesh is calculated at 116 per cent with Rs 5, 26,125 crore of credits and Rs 4,51,121in deposits – a gap of Rs 75,044 crore cross-subsidisation by the banks.
Against this background, the bevy of electoral promises are ready to welcome the ruler of Andhra Pradesh like the 32 statues of angels in the famous folklore ‘Singhaasan Battisi’ adorning the staircase of King Vikramaditya.
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