Hitting out at National Democratic Alliance, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Friday the Opposition could not muster the courage to provide relief to farmers during their six-year rule.
While releasing the guidelines to operationalise the Rs 71,680-crore (Rs 716.8 billion) loan waiver scheme for farmers, he said: "The scheme of this nature has never been attempted. The NDA government could not even contemplate a scheme of this kind during their six years of rule."
Describing the loan waiver scheme as the most ambitious programme ever undertaken by any government in India, he said: "We have been able to muster the courage to plan such an ambitious scheme only towards the end of the fourth year."
The United Progressive Alliance government completed on Thursday four years in office.
The debt waiver scheme, he added, required massive resources and only when he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were confident of required resources, the government went ahead with it.
"We have addressed a large part of the burden of the farmers," Chidambaram said, adding the debt waiver scheme would benefit over four crore farmers.
He said the farmers of the country deserved help and that is why the UPA government has come up with this scheme.
"We are discharging a debt that we owe to our farmers . . . the debt that the non-farmers owe to the farmers," he said, adding that the central government was taking over the debt and reimbursing the banks.
Asked about the additional requirement of about Rs 11,600 crore (Rs 116 billion) for the scheme, the minister said the actual may be around Rs 66,000 crore (Rs 660 billion) as the current estimates were based on unaudited figures.
Pressed further, he said in a lighter vein: "We will tax you."
He reiterated that banks would be in no way prejudiced in implementing the scheme.
"In fact, the debt is taken over effectively by the central government and the banks will be reimbursed fully for the debt waiver and debt relief. Banks have by and large welcomed the scheme," Chidambaram said.
