Indebtedness: Field Notes on Farmers from Haryana, India

Jakhar Babloo (), Siwach Manoj () and Kait Rohtas ()
Additional contact information
Jakhar Babloo: PhD, Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Department of Economics, ; Barnala Rd, Sirsa, Haryana 125055, India
Siwach Manoj: PhD, Prof., Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Department of Economics, ; Barnala Rd, Sirsa, Haryana 125055, India
Kait Rohtas: PhD, Assoc. Prof. of Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Department of Economics, ; Barnala Rd, Sirsa, Haryana 125055, India

Zagadnienia Ekonomiki Rolnej / Problems of Agricultural Economics, 2022, vol. 373, issue 4, 121-139

Abstract: The aim of the paper was to assess the debt burden on farmers and suggest policy solutions. The study is based on a field survey of six hundred indebted farmers. It showed that the average amount of debt per sampled farmer was INR 563,960 (USD 6,945.24).1 The study found a skewed debt access to semi--medium and medium farmers. The largest debt share is mostly observed among semi-medium, medium, and large farmers, as the top 33% of farmers account for 71.8% of the debt share. By contrast, the bottom 48% (marginal farmers) are left to struggle with only 14.8% of the debt share. The source-wise distribution shows that one-third of debt share is still acquired from non-institutional sources. It depicts that non-institutional sources are also engaged in the disbursement of loans to agriculture sector at higher and compound interest rates. Furthermore, commission agents’ or arhtiyas’2 role is dominant among the farmers. Nearly half of the debt amount is still used for non-productive activities. This is one of the major challenges for policymakers to resolve the problem of indebtedness.

Keywords: agrarian distress; farmers; indebtedness; loan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E43 G21 P32 Q14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.30858/zer-156651 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:zerpae:v:373:y:2022:i:4:p:121-139:n:2

DOI: 10.30858/zer-156651

Access Statistics for this article

Zagadnienia Ekonomiki Rolnej / Problems of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Sylwia Łaba

More articles in Zagadnienia Ekonomiki Rolnej / Problems of Agricultural Economics from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().