Credit Markets for Small Farms: Role for Institutional Innovations

Indian agriculture is characterized by the predominance of smallholders. This paper seeks to examine the access of small holders to agriculture credit in the context of financial sector reforms in India in the nineties. It explores the role of institutional and non institutional agencies in extending agriculture credit to the smallholder and the ground realities as revealed by recent data sets. The nineties also saw the unfolding of the largest microfinance programme in the world in India. While this was very successful in bringing micro enterprises under the credit purview, it was unable to cater to the need for agriculture credit. This paper examines the reasons for this and suggests that newer kinds of institutional innovations in the Pilot stage like, Joint Liability Groups, VDC- Farmers Club Model, SHG-Contract Farming Linkage model which seek to overcome the difficulties faced by smallholders in accessing agriculture credit are effective. They need to be upscaled and mainstreamed in order to bring about vibrancy in the rural credit market in India.