Willful Defaulters and Miserable Farmers- Who’s loans to be waived off?
Willful defaulters owe PSU banks a total of Rs. 64,334.59 crores at the end of the first half of the current fiscal year. Public sector Banks Register 1,624 FIRs against Willful Defaulters.
- Rs 11,705 crores loaned by State Bank of India (SBI), remains unpaid by 1,164 willful defaulters uptil September 2015, as per the data collected by Finance Ministry reflected.
- 904 defaulters by the end of 2015 were willfully reluctant to pay outlandish loans of 10,869.71 crores to Punjab National Bank (PNB).
This is the report of two leading PSU banks of India. If one believes the report of International Monetary Funds (IMF), then 33% of corporate debt in India is at risk, in other words the banks cannot retrieve them completely.
Let’s Check Some Outstanding Numbers
- Winsome Diamonds and Jewellers owes 699.54 crores to Central Bank.
- Bharti Shipyard Ltd. Rs 624.85 crores to Allahabad Bank.
- Infra Engineering Ltd. of 406.29 crores to Bank of Maharashtra.
Kingfisher Airlines owes 7,000 crore to 17 banks together; and if the banks auction to retrieve the loans, the banks can get only 0.9% of the money that this big flying shark owes to them, that is only 6 crores.
Today these banks, including State Bank of India fail to find any buyers of “Kingfisher” trademark.
But the astounding fact is that, after declaring self as ‘defaulter’, Vijay Mallya purchased ‘Barbados Tridents’ in Caribbean Premier League. Their lifestyles are getting lavish and flashy even after being defaulter.
This is what ‘willful defaulter’ is.
On February 11, 2016 Punjab National Bank declared United Breweries Holdings Ltd (UBHL) as “willful defaulter” while SBI declared all three, UBHL, Kingfisher and Mallya as the same.
Another interesting addition is that the big sharks continue to make huge donations to political parties which remain undisclosed, even though their loans have been written off.
However, one pertinent question that arises in mind of all of us, the common people is that had we became the willful defaulters, would these banks spare us? Would we continue to live luxurious lives?
In the article “Does it pay to be a farmer in India” of The Hindu published on June 27, 2015 Rukmini S says that “Over half of all agricultural households are indebted, and these are no small debts; the average loan outstanding for a farm household in India today is Rs 47,000.”
For a person with such minimal income has an interest; how is it possible to pay them. Moreover these farmers are getting less revenue for their yearly production, whereas the consumers are expected to pay all the more with each day.
Imagine how the farmer belonging to a market which is one of the highest contributor in the GDP(Gross Domestic Product) and stands third in the farm and agricultural products in the world market, is squished till the last drop and history had shown that they surrendered to the miseries and committed suicide whereas these banks fail to recover billions of money from the people who are still leading luxurious lives.
However, on last day of leap February the finance minister, Arun Jaitley in his Union Budget promised to invest Rs 35,984 crores towards the benefit of welfare of the farmers.
However, it’s easier said than done. So let’s see, if the poor farmers will be given wings to fly.
Also Read : What is good for farmers in Union Budget 2016
