Banking at the Grassroots
Contents: Preface. 1. The problem. 2. Agricultural credit and UBKGB. 3. UBKGB and credit needs of farmers. 4. Farmers experience with bank loans. 5. Utilization of loan, repaying capacity and repayment performance of borrowers. 6. Impact of agricultural credit. 7. Conclusions. Bibliography. Appendix.
India is basically an agrarian economy. At present agriculture contributes more than twenty percent to its national income engaging about 70 percent of the population, directly or indirectly. The agricultural sector has been transformed from mono-cropping to multi-cropping, although a sizeable portion of agricultural land is cropped once in a year due mainly to the lack of irrigation facilities. A large section of Indian agriculturists are small and marginal land holders. They really don\'t have enough money utilised in the production of agricultural produces. They are thus suffering from the dirth of capital and unable to buy modern farm inputs like HYV seeds, chemical fertilisers, irrigation facilities, tractors, power-tillers, harvesters, threshers and other implements. Obviously, they are in need of multi-credit facilities. These huge credits cannot be supplied by a single agency. In this context a multi-agency approach has been viewed as a better alternative. These agencies, in particular, have been performing this task. These are the cooperatives, the commercial banks and the regional rural banks. They are in fact constantly making huge efforts in providing credit to the agriculturists. Due to the coordinated efforts of these agencies the exploitations of the private money lending agencies in terms of charging a very high rate of interest from the farmers have been reduced. The regional rural bank has been established in rural India as third arm to cater to the credit demand of the farmers. The Uttar Banga Kshetriya Gramin Bank was a such kind of bank established in 1976 in the districts of Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar of West Bengal state. In this book we study the relative performance of the grassroot level bank in meeting the credit need of farmers, volume of credit disbursed by the bank, borrowers experience in securing credit from the bank and what is more to study the economic improvement of the borrowers. In this context we have examined the problems of recoveries and overdues, time lag in getting agricultural credit and many other related issues. (jacket)
India is basically an agrarian economy. At present agriculture contributes more than twenty percent to its national income engaging about 70 percent of the population, directly or indirectly. The agricultural sector has been transformed from mono-cropping to multi-cropping, although a sizeable portion of agricultural land is cropped once in a year due mainly to the lack of irrigation facilities. A large section of Indian agriculturists are small and marginal land holders. They really don\'t have enough money utilised in the production of agricultural produces. They are thus suffering from the dirth of capital and unable to buy modern farm inputs like HYV seeds, chemical fertilisers, irrigation facilities, tractors, power-tillers, harvesters, threshers and other implements. Obviously, they are in need of multi-credit facilities. These huge credits cannot be supplied by a single agency. In this context a multi-agency approach has been viewed as a better alternative. These agencies, in particular, have been performing this task. These are the cooperatives, the commercial banks and the regional rural banks. They are in fact constantly making huge efforts in providing credit to the agriculturists. Due to the coordinated efforts of these agencies the exploitations of the private money lending agencies in terms of charging a very high rate of interest from the farmers have been reduced. The regional rural bank has been established in rural India as third arm to cater to the credit demand of the farmers. The Uttar Banga Kshetriya Gramin Bank was a such kind of bank established in 1976 in the districts of Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar of West Bengal state. In this book we study the relative performance of the grassroot level bank in meeting the credit need of farmers, volume of credit disbursed by the bank, borrowers experience in securing credit from the bank and what is more to study the economic improvement of the borrowers. In this context we have examined the problems of recoveries and overdues, time lag in getting agricultural credit and many other related issues. (jacket)
