Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district: A dying bank resorts to ‘band baja’ to get debt-ridden farmers to pay

While bank officials defend this move as a final effort to save the bank from losing its license, farmers say it is intentionally turning a blind eye towards bigger defaulters and is only targeting small players.

Vijay Ghonse Patil, managing director of the bank, said they have issued 20,700 notices and have also carried out the ‘naming and shaming’ in around 10 cases.

Stoutly defending their action, Patil said these farmers are in default since 2002 and had chosen not to take part in the special farmland waiver introduced by the Central government in 2008.

“The total default amount till date is Rs 82 crore and the interest of the same comes to around Rs 110 crore. Nearly 90 per cent of the farmers, who have been issued the notices, have land holdings above five acres. They are not technically small-scale farmers,” he added.

Patil also pointed out that the loans, on which these farmers have defaulted, are called as short-term loans in banking terminology. Such loans, he added, have a window of payment between 15 months and five years. These loans are normally used for purchase of farm machinery.

Back in 2008, when the Central government had announced the farm loan waiver scheme, these farmers had the option to pay 75 per cent of the principal amount and get their dues cleared. “However, these farmers chose not to do so and the interest went on spiralling,” he said.

Mid-December, the residents of village Nangur in Lohara taluka of the district, saw bank officials descend in full force in their village. Pitching tents outside the homes of the defaulters, the officials kicked up a right din with “band baja”, as they went about naming and shaming them. A farmer, whose name had featured on the list, said everyone in the village came to know of his default.