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Bankers Committee, District Coordination Committee and District Review
Committee seldom function with all seriousness. The Lead District Manger
who is responsible for preparing the credit plan and who monitors the
progress is burdened with a number of other responsibilities like mobilizing
deposits. He should only be given the task of coordinating the preparation and
implementation of credit plans, given more authority and made accountable.
In fact, he should be deemed to have been deputed to the Reserve Bank of
India (RBI) and given functional freedom and the functionaries from line
departments like agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry responsible
for assessing and implementing the credit requirements of the district should
be placed under him. The District Development Manager (DDM) of NABARD
should be a member of the team. The Annual Credit Plan based on Potential
Liked Credit Plan (PLCP) for each district prepared by NABARD should, in
fact, be prepared in close consultation with District Lead Manager and other
functionaries from line departments. The plan should have added focus on
agriculture, including animal husbandry and horticultural development. In
fact, there is little agriculture in the whole credit plan in the current scheme of
things. It is important that while preparing such plans, the scientist in-charge
of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra located in that district should be actively involved.
Once the plan is ready, it should be discussed threadbare in a meeting chaired
by Deputy Commissioner and attended by all involved including the scientist
in-charge of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra. And once the plan is finalized, it should
be mandatory to implement the plan and accomplish the targets. The Lead
District Manger should be responsible for monitoring the implementation
of the plan. For this, he should be provided with adequate infrastructures,
particularly the IT-related ones.
In addition, the Usha Thorat High-Level Committee has further
instilled life into the Lead Bank Scheme by proposing that the processes of
“financial inclusion” to be attained with state and district-level Credit Plans be
dovetailed into the processes involved in achieving the objective of “inclusive
growth” to be attained with the help of state and district-level Development
Plans. The Committee has proposed four- step tasks before the system : (i)
one-time comprehensive state-level as well district-level development plans;
(ii) NABARD’s PLP for each district to be ready in August each year; (iii)The
institutional arrangements for linking various bankers’ committees with the
Panchayati Raj institutions; and (iv) The Lead Bank Review Committee to focus
on a wider perspective of rural development requiring “credit plus” services by
banks but supported by state governments. As part of this exercise, overseeing
the progress made in setting up RSETIs for training in individual districts will
be the responsibility of the Lead Bank.
