Indebtedness: Field Notes on Farmers from Haryana, India

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.