Agricultural Credit in India – Innovations in Design and Delivery of Products and Services
The concept of bringing farmers together in a voluntary group was initiated in 1982 through the Farmers’ Club Programme. This institutional innovation has received a renewed focus from 2007–08 onwards. Nevertheless, access to farm credit sector has not been easy and adequate. In this paper, innovative approaches to improve agricultural credit flow have been captured from the secondary sources and analysed using compound annual growth rate and descriptive analytical tools. The share of private moneylenders has decreased with the institutional agencies making inroads into the rural scene. The structure of the sources of credit has witnessed a clear shift wherein the scheduled commercial banks and RRBs have emerged as the major sources of direct and indirect institutional credit to agriculture in recent years. The SHG-bank linkage programme, Kisan Credit Card, Farmers Clubs, Joint Liability Groups and Interest Subvention Scheme have been promoted to supplement rural credit delivery effectively and have also shown a significantly increasing growth rates over the years. In addition, there are a number of other small innovations that have taken place across the spectrum of agricultural credit markets. All these would eventually contribute to making sustainable access to agricultural finance leading towards a path for prosperity of farming community, especially the small and vulnerable farm households.
Financial Innovation in Indian Agricultural Credit Market: Progress and Performance of Kisan Credit Card
Credit is one of the critical inputs in agriculture and an effective means of rural development in India. The institutional credit delivery system for agriculture was started in the country with the setting up of co-operative credit societies in 1904, but the coverage of these societies towards meeting the credit requirement of farmers was limited. Therefore, the farming community had to depend on informal money-lending sources for its entire credit requirement. The recommendations of All India Rural Credit Survey Committee in fact laid the foundations of institutional mechanism for establishing a sound credit delivery system in the country for financing agriculture and allied activities. A large number of agencies, including co-operative banks, Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), commercial banks, non-banking financial institutions, micro financial institutions and Self-Help Groups together constitute the Indian institutional rural credit delivery system. One of the objectives of the credit policy is to minimise the role of money lenders in the flow of agricultural credit. Several initiatives have been taken in this direction and the major milestones in rural credit flow are: acceptance of the Report of Rural Credit Survey Committee (1954), nationalisation of major commercial banks (1969 and 1980), opening of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) in 1975, and establishment of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982 and introduction of the on-going reforms in the financial sector since 1991. Simultaneously, several other measures like launching of Lead Bank Scheme, directed lending for the priority sectors, linkage of banking sector with the government sponsored programmes targeted at the poor, Differential Rate of Interest Scheme, Service Area Approach, SHG-Bank linkage programme, etc. were also undertaken. In recent years, initiatives like Kisan Credit Card Scheme (KCCs), special Agricultural Credit Plans, and Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF)
The Accuracy of Reported Insurance Status in the MEPS
Estimates of the number of insured and uninsured Americans are watched by numerous policymakers and the public, yet studies find respondents do not report their insurance status perfectly. Using four sources of validation data, including surveys of employers and providers, this paper assesses the quality of respondents' reports of private insurance and uninsurance in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC), a nationally representative household survey. Regression analysis is used to assess the extent to which factors are associated with disagreements in reported insurance status across sources.