After loan waiver, Madhya Pradesh farmers to get pension

Bhopal: After announcing to write off farm loans, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath is ready to take up another ambitious task to start pension for peasants who have crossed 60 years of age.

The chief minister has ordered the state agriculture department to conduct a survey to identify the farmers who fulfilled the criteria being fixed by the government, to get proposed monthly pension of Rs 1,000 each, an official spokesman said here on Friday.

The Congress in its election manifesto had promised to waive farm loans besides providing pension to the elderly peasants. Madhya Pradesh will be the first state in the country to introduce pension for farmers.

The small farmers who have attained age of 60 and have no alternative source of income other than farming are eligible for pension.

They should not have more than 2.5 acre of agriculture land each to be the beneficiary under the scheme.

“We are preparing data on beneficiaries of the proposed pension scheme for farmers. It is estimated tentatively that around 10 lakh farmers may be benefited by the proposal and it may cost state exchequer Rs 12,000 crore to implement the scheme”, a spokesman of state agriculture department said.Budgetary  allocation would be made for the scheme.

Meanwhile, the exercise to fix parameters for waiving farm loans in the state was still on. An official panel has been constituted to give final shape to the loan waiver proposal.

The panel has been divided to visit states of Maharashtra and Punjab to study their modalities on implementation of farm loan waiver there.