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Insofar as the data at the all-India level are concerned, information
on agricultural credit rendered by cooperatives, regional rural banks (RRB)
and commercial banks are available, separately for credit flow and credit
outstandings for all recent years as disseminated by RBI and NABARD. But, it
is the state level data on the ground level credit that is truly scanty and difficult
to come by.
In this respect, the following observations made by Prof. A. Vaidyanathan
in his latest ‘Perspective’ piece (EPW, May 4, 2013) are very illumininating:
“The reach of the Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS)
in terms of membership, borrowers, and access to credit from
different segments of the rural population is also much less than
available data would suggest. According to these data, which are
unverifi ed, PACS have 52 million borrowers, one-third of whom
are small farmers and artisans. The number of households in these
categories accessing cooperative credit would be much smaller.
Moreover, given the uneven distribution of cooperatives across and
within regions, access to cooperatives is likely to be much less than
the average in many areas. This is corroborated by independent
estimates based on the National Sample Survey Organisation’s
(NSSO) household surveys in 2002-03 which estimated that only
13% of rural households report borrowing from cooperatives,
banks and other institutional sources. The incidence of borrowing
from institutions and its volume per household increases with the
total value of assets per household. Barely 5% of households in the
lowest asset classes report borrowing from institutions compared to
more than onefourth of those in the group with the largest assets.
Furthermore, the volume of borrowings from cooperatives estimated
by the NSSO is less than half the volume of direct loans reported to
RBI as having been disbursed to agriculture and allied activities. In
the case of other institutions, estimated volumes are 60% lower than
reported to RBI” (pp.31-32).
Data on agricultural lendings of cooperatives are thus most hazy. The
traditional publication
Statistical Tables Relating to Cooperatives Movement
in India
is dated as it is now available only up to 2006-07. Through the
two NABARD-sponsored federation agencies – National Federation of State
Cooperative Banks (NAFSCOB) and National Cooperative Federation of
Agricultural and Rural Development Banks (NAFARDB) –, there are standalone
data for long periods on different tiers of short-term and long-term rural credit
