Budget bonanza
A few years ago, while delivering the Palkhivala Memorial Lecture in Mumbai on the then Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's Budget, P Chidambaram made the perceptive comment that it was the most unfunded budget in the country's history. There was no provision in the Annual Financial Statement on many new items of expenditure. Now, ironically, it is the turn of Yashwant Sinha to point out how Chidambaram's budget is silent on expenditure on such proposals as debt waiver! Any issue of bonds to banks by way of compensation for debt waiver and relief, especially when staggered over three years, will put them in the same predicament as the oil marketing companies burdened with similar IOUs. The bonds are not likely to qualify for investments to meet the Statutory Liquidity Ratio. In case of depreciation in their values, the banks will face the same problems they experienced a few years ago in adhering to prudential norms. The difficulties are cropping up at a time when the system is in transition to Basel-II norms. There is an ominous suggestion in some official quarters that banks that have already made provisions for the overdues of farm loans may not be given the compensation. It will be unfair to them. The overdue loans will still remain part of the gross non-performing assets of the institutions, reflecting on their soundness. The loan waiver does not solve the problem of farmer distress. The inequity in the definition of marginal or small farmers based only on cultivated holding is obvious. According to the budget document, a marginal farmer is one with a holding up to one hectare and a small farmer is one with holdings between one and two hectares. A farmer with, say, five hectares of rain-fed land in Pali Marwar in Rajasthan is economically in no better condition than one with two hectares with assured irrigation families in Ludhiana in the Punjab. But the former will not be eligible for the waiver. The need for adopting an income criterion for defining the size of farms was discussed in detail in the Reserve Bank of India's Report on the Seventh Follow-Up Rural Credit Survey entitled "The Small Farmers