49
structures, but there is no way of knowing how, for instance, credit flows from
state and central cooperative banks and PACs are consolidated to produce total
agricultural credit flow. It is said that as PACs hardly have resources of their
own and have data on agricultural credit flows consolidated at the state and
district central level banks. PACS are the most pivotal grassroots level agencies
and the strength of the cooperative structure at the states’ level is determined
by their presence. Data do suggest that their lendings are somewhat higher
than their borrowings from upper tiers. Also, about 35% of their lendings are
medium and long-term in nature. It is not known how these are accounted for
in the aggregate picture drawn up on cooperative credit flows for agriculture
at the all-India and at states’ levels. For avoiding the cluttering of the main
body of the study, the data compiled on the cooperative credit institutions are
reproduced as standalone sets in Exhibit I.
Nevertheless, we do have consolidated data for cooperatives along
with those for commercial banks, though with the time series truncated after
the 1990s. Even in this respect, data on outstandings at states level are not
available. While such data on outstandings are available in respect of scheduled
commercial banks and RRBs, there are significant differences even in them as
between control returns field by banks and consolidated and published by the
RBI in its
Annual Reports
and
Reports on Trend and Progress of Banking in
India
, on the one hand, and branch level returns filed by banks and tabulated
and published by the RBI as
Basic Statistical Returns
(BSR) of scheduled
commercial banks in India, on the other. These differences are to an extent
explained by definitional differences, but even so, the data difference call for
special attention. There are serious differences as between the nation-wide
field survey results and the official data on household debt against banking
institutions. In this respect, it would not be appropriate to look at differences
in absolute numbers; instead, the evolving structure and distribution appear
meaningful. However, the differences appear more serious within the official
sets of data. An attempt has been made in this study to marshal as much of
the available data as possible and analyse them at all-India and regional and
state levels.
