Singh, VirendraAvinash Kumar2018-09-052018-09-052015-07http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810071962Agriculture and allied sectors accounted for 13.7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2013, and about 50% of the total workforce (Economic survey, 2013).Agriculture is a dominant sector of Indian economy and credit plays an important role in increasing agricultural production, as it is the life blood of modern agriculture. The success of institutional agriculture credit delivery system depends upon the structure, progress and performance of it. The entire rural credit delivery system is not in a good shape in Bihar. A report of Expert Group of ‘Ministry of Finance’ on ‘Agricultural Indebtedness’ enlisted seven districts of Bihar among 100 ‘agriculturally less developed and distress districts of India’ on the bases of lower productivity of agriculture, lower credit-deposit ratio and low proportion of urban to rural households. The present study was conducted in the Madhubani district of Bihar, with the objectives; to examine the structure of institutional agriculture production credit delivery system, to examine the progress and performance of institutional agriculture production credit delivery system, to assess the impact of institutional agriculture production credit on net farm income, to determine the factors influencing the use of institutional agriculture production credit, to identify and rank the constraints faced by farmers in getting institutional agriculture production credit.The study was based on the data collected from 100 sample farmers (50 loanee and 50 non-loanee farmers)residing in randomly selected ten villages of five development blocks of the district pertaining to the year 2013-14. Descriptive analysis was done to know the structure; progress and performance of institutional agriculture production credit delivery system. The impact of institutional agriculture credit was estimated by comparing the costs and returns in crop cultivation of loanee farmers in before and after institutional agriculture production credit use situation. The Logit regression model was used to determine the factors influencing the use of agricultural credit; and Garrett’s ranking technique was used to rank constraints faced by the farmers in getting institutional credit. Out of total bank branches (248) operating in Madhubani district 47.98 per cent (119) branches were of CBs, 5.65 per cent (14) of CCBs and 46.37 per cent (115) of RRBs. Further out of total bank branches operating in the district about 67.34 per cent (167) branches were operating in rural areas, whereas 31.45 per cent (78) branches and 1.21 (03) per cent branches were found to be operating in semi urban and urban areas, respectively. The banking facility was not satisfactory in the district in general and rural areas in specific, as the bank density in the district was very poor (18049 persons per branch) as compared to the national average bank density (about 12000 persons per branch). The target set for disbursing agricultural credit increased more than three folds since last five year from Rs.256 crores in 2009-10 to Rs.890 crores in 2013-14, but the performance in achieving these targets remained fluctuating between from about 69 per cent to 98 per cent during above said period. Thus the achievement made by the CBs and RRBs were satisfactory, whereas the achievement made by CCBs was very low in the district during last five years .The target set and achievement made in issuing KCCs by bank in Madhubani district were found to be increasing in absolute term, but the performance of banks in achieving the targets as a percentage of target was found to be continuously decreasing in the district over a period of six years from 2009-10 to 2014-15.Out of the target set under ACP by SLBC for all banks operating in the district to advance credit towards priority sector and non-priority sector, the highest target of Rs.155698 lacs (71.62 per cent) was set for priority sector, whereas the same set for non- priority sector was Rs.61703 lacs (28.38 per cent). Further, among the priority sectors the highest target of Rs.120630 lacs (77.48 per cent of target of priority sector) was set for agriculture sector followed by micro and small enterprises (Rs.21673 lacs i.e. 13.92 per cent) and other priority sector (Rs.13395 lacs i.e. 8.60 per cent). The average CD ratio achieved by all banks operating in the district was 30.71 per cent, which was not only lower than the state level CD ratio (46.51 per cent) and national level CD ratio (78 per cent), but also lower than the stipulated norm of 60 per cent set by the RBI. The farmers were obtaining more output and realized the better price for their output conversely getting higher net income from cultivation of paddy, wheat, maize and potato in after credit use situation. It can be inferred that the institutional credit support extended to the farmers allowed them not only to use more inputs, but also substitute the inputs for one another. Further, credit enabled the farmers not only to obtain higher yields, but also fetch better price for their produce and higher net returns from the crops grown by them. It was observed that the use of agricultural credit is a function of farming experience, family size, land holding size, annual income, distance from bank, membership of cooperative and use of mass media. The logit analysis reveals that the variables like family size, use of mass media had positive influence on the decision of farmers regarding the use of institutional credit, while the factors like farming experience, annual income and membership of a cooperative had a negative influence on the same. All variables together had a significant impact on the decision of using institutional agriculture production credit, as the Chi-square statistic was 109.33 and R2 value was 0.8865, which was statistically significant. The farmers reported that the most severe constraint faced by farmers in getting institutional credit was lack of awareness about the benefits of institutional credit with Garratt’s score 72.74, followed by illiteracy (72.12), involvement of bribe (71.92) and difficulty in opening bank account (71.28). The results of the study suggest that there is need to expend banking facilities in rural areas, the banks need to increase the ratio of rural branches by mobilizing more funds to agriculture sector. To make flow of credit hassle free towards agriculture sector the banks need to adopt innovative measures, like Kisan Credit Cards. There is need to re-orient the agriculture credit policy and strategy to provide larger credit accommodation to realize higher returns from agriculture. Also there is need to create a farmers friendly environment so that farmers can avail the credit facility to tap the untapped potential of agriculture sector. There is also need to initiate awareness campaign to aware the farmers about benefit of institutional agriculture credit, they are also need to be educated about procedure and practices of banks so that they can escape themselves from any unfair expenditure like bribe or under table dealingsennullThesis