Cabinet meets today, loans, security on agenda

Interest subsidy on short-term loans to farmers and ratification of a convention for intelligence-sharing on terrorism and trans-national organised crime are on the agenda of Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 3, 2009, 01:53:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Interest subsidy on short-term loans to farmers and ratification of a convention for intelligence-sharing on terrorism and trans-national organised crime are on the agenda of Thursday’s Cabinet meeting.

The finance ministry has proposed to continue the interest subvention scheme for short-term crop loans to farmers for loans up to Rs 3 lakh per farmer at the interest rate of 7 per cent per annum.

In addition, the farmers who repay the loan in time will get an additional subvention of 1 per cent. It would mean that the annual interest on the loan for such farmers would be six per cent.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had proposed interest subvention in his 2009 Budget speech. Now, the ministry is bringing the proposal for the cabinet’s approval to allow agriculture credit flow of Rs 3,25,000 crore in the financial year 2009-10 to public sector and cooperative banks.

The second proposal before the cabinet is ratification of a treaty between India and the six other countries for collectively combating terrorism in the region, including cooperation in intelligence-sharing. India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Myanmar and Thailand are signatory of the convention — the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

The convention allows cooperation between security agencies on combating terrorism that entails intra-regional cooperation in intelligence-sharing and legal and law enforcement issues. It also involves combating financing of terrorism and prevention of illicit trafficking of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursor chemicals.

The pact has acquired an added urgency due to a spate of recent terror attacks in India, an escalation in activities of extremists and terrorists in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the increasing region-wide networking among terror outfits.

The convention was signed in August 2008 in Sri Lanka.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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