29
(vi) The notion among the farmers was that the debt relief may be announced
today or tomorrow. This was resulting in default in repayments. Bankers
were of the view that there were no clear cut guidelines on financing to
farmers whose accounts became NPA and were settled under OTS Scheme.
They felt that the position had deteriorated a little bit as some of the farmers
had been reported to have gone to money lenders for their crop cultivation
needs also.
(vii) Farmers having good financial liquidity were not interested in availing KCC
loan.
(viii) Some bankers opined that many farmers were not fully aware about the
Scheme and its features and also the pitfalls were not known to them.
Reasons for gap: Farmers’ perspective
2.13 As many as 255 farmers who had not availed KCC loan from any bank were
interviewed to understand the reasons for their exclusion from KCC coverage.
The general profile of non-KCC farmers and the reasons for not availing the KCC
loan are given in Table 2.5 & 2.6 respectively.
2.14 The analysis of profile of the control sample farmers indicated that 17.25 per
cent of the farmers not covered under KCC belonged to SC/ST category and
this suggests that the banks did not discriminate farmers on social grounds
while deciding upon extending the KCC loan. It can also be said that exclusion of
farmers from KCC coverage was not specific to any particular community.
2.15 It may be observed from table 2.5 that average land holding across total sample
was 3.04 acre varying from 0.76 acre in Varanasi district of UP to 8.59 acre in
Bathinda district in Punjab. As many as 39 farmers out of 255 non-KCC farmers
were found to be owning tractors also.
2.16 Quite a good number of non-KCC farmers (127 out of 255) also owned some type
of livestock covering cow, buffalo, goat, etc., although in many cases, the income
from it was not sufficient to take care of credit requirement for crop production
of the farmers.
2.17 About 10 per cent of the non-KCC farmers (25) had availed term loan from banks
for the purposes like two wheeler, tempo, pump-set, etc. It suggests that they were
well aware about the advantages of banking with formal financial institutions,
but somehow were averse of availing KCC or were not getting it for some reasons.
2.18 It is interesting to note that 111 out of 255 (43.5%) non-KCC farmers showed
their unwillingness to avail KCC loan. Major reasons for their unwillingness
included, the family head was not staying in the village (20 farmers), some were
fully engaged with other family business & had full time job (29 farmers), some
were able to manage crop cultivation without loan and were of the view that why
to create debt burden, etc.
