Lack of institutional credit has remained a major constraint in the development of agriculture sector, despite the significant strides achieved in terms of spread, network and outreach of rural institutional financial institutions since independence. Therefore, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced Kissan Credit Card Scheme in 1998-99, as a step towards facilitating the access to short-term credit by the borrowers from formal financial institutions. The basic objective was improving the rural credit delivery system as well as simplification of the procedures of farm credit. The growth...

Indian agriculture is overwhelmingly a small farmers enterprise with proportion of small and marginal land holdings (below 2 ha) constituting nearly 83 per cent of the total holdings in India. But these resource poor farmers are mostly unable to meet their financial liabilities from their limited income and are generally indebted. The lack of institutional credit has remained a major constraint in the economic enlistment of these people, despite the significant strides achieved in terms of spread, network and outreach of rural financial institutions like commercial banks, reginal rural banks,...