the farmer loan waiver fiasco

sainath writes 2 nice articles which beautifully capture the entire drama-baazi around the 2008 Union Budget's most discussed moment - the Rs 60K crore farmer loan waiver.
he puts it in such brilliant perspective in 2 scything articles:

Between 2000-04, banks wrote off over Rs. 44,000 crores. Mostly, this favoured a tiny number of wealthy people. One 'beneficiary' was a Ketan Parekh group company that saw Rs. 60 crore knocked off. (The Indian Express, May 12, 2005). However, those 'waivers' are done quietly. In 2004, last year of the NDA, such write-offs went up by 16 per cent. Such 'waivers' have not slowed down since 2004......read the entire article here.

a tiny Wall Street cabal which gave itself bonuses worth billions of dollars just weeks before the crash gets a bailout of Rs.1,19,520 crores. That's almost double the Rs.60,000 crores given to tens of millions of farmers in dire straits in this country....read the entire article here.