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type of land other than ‘
homestead land only’
and little less than 7 percent
possessed only homestead land. Further, NSSO report has also estimated
the number of Agricultural Households reporting cultivation of crops at 7.80
crore which means these many agricultural households need KCC loan for crop
cultivation. In other words, 95% of the deserving agricultural households have
already been issued KCC.
2.11 In this connection, it would be interesting to mention here that the possession of
land was an essential condition for defining a person as farmer (farmer household)
in 59th round of NSSO Survey. However, an agricultural household as defined
in NSS 70th round (
Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in
India),
he may or may not possess agricultural land. In 70th round, households
with at least one member self-employed in agriculture either in principal status
or subsidiary status and having total value of produce more than Rs. 3000 during
last 365 days were only considered as agricultural household.
Reasons for gap between number of agricultural holding and number of operative KCC
Reasons for gap: Banker’s perspective
2.12 Interaction with bankers during the field visit in the selected states suggests the
following reasons for the gap between the number of agricultural holding and
number of operative KCC:
(i) Despite efforts by banks, there were some farmers who were not willing
to avail crop loan through KCC. These farmers either had some source
of income other than the farm income (e.g. service, business, etc.) or they
were absentee lords.
(ii) Bankers were found not very keen to finance the farmers who had very
small piece of land and depended much on wage labour and didn’t have
any other source of income. Since most of the small farms were not viable
and such farmer also didn’t have any other important source of income,
bankers avoided extending KCC to such farmers.
(iii) There were cases where the land was still in the name of father and the sons
had divided the land and were operating on it separately. Although farmers
were producing the Land Possession Certificates (LPC) as well as the ‘Family
Tree’ certified by the Gram Panchayat/ Revenue Dept., sometimes these
certificates were found fake or reported to had been used simultaneously in
two banks to get KCC account opened in more than one banks.
(iv) Sometimes, some small farmers were not able to produce LPC or any other
type of document certifying the possession of land by them. Under such
circumstances, it became difficult for the banks to extend loan to such
farmers.
(v) Land records/revenue records were not available online, which created
problem for banks to verify these records and also there was no facility for
on-line creation of charge on the land records.
