A brief history of farm loan waivers in India may be in order. The first major nationwide farm loan waiver was undertaken in 1990 and the cost to the national exchequer was around 10,000 crores, which works out to 50,557 crores at current prices using the GDP deflator.
Let me now share with you the details, which run into eight sections, the first being the Constitutional position of the sub-national Governments. In the absence of firm data on local bodies (the third tier of government in India), the analysis is confined to the level of provincial governments. I.