India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, often hailed as one of the most balanced finance ministers of India has shown the world that he is a politician first and a financial planner only later.

In February, Chidambaram announced a 60 Crore waiver for farmers. Even till date, he has not completely accounted for how India is going to pay for such a huge amount of public debt being written off.

Today, he seems to have added to this huge burden on the Indian taxpayer by further extending this write off to big farmers as well. I guess he realises that with his term ending this year and the UPA's chances of coming to power again being very slight owing to persistent inflation, somebody else will have to clean up the mess.

Mr. Chidambaram, there was a time when I admired your Oxford accented speeches and thought that you really cared for your country. Needless to say, you have joined the ranks of the spineless that the congress party seems to prefer

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The United Progressive Alliance government on Friday increased its loan waiver package by nearly 20 per cent to Rs. 71,680 crore to provide relief to 'big' farmers, bringing them under the purview of the debt write-off scheme as proposed in the 2008-09 budget.