India is an agrarian economy with around 60 per cent of its population directly or indirectly depend upon agriculture and allied activities. But, this sector is often attributed as gambling and natural calamities as monsoon. The failure of these monsoons leading to a series of droughts, lack of better prices, exploitation by middlemen, all of which have led to severe indebtedness of the farming community. In the recent era, the increase in cost of production outweighed the output prices and this led the farmers to enter into debt trap. To overcome this phenomenon, the Government of India announced a relief package for farmers, called the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, which included the complete waiver of loans given to small and marginal farmers. This package served nearly 30 million small and marginal farmers and the burden amount of nearly 500 billion rupees was waived. However, the implementation of this Scheme showed adverse influence on the repayment pattern of even genuine farmers after 2008. With this background, this study was attempted to analyze the causal factors for farmers’ indebtedness, implications of the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme and rendered useful suggestion to overcome farmers’ indebtedness. This book is a useful information tool to the policy makers working for the betterment of our farmers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR K. Sandhya
Ms. K. Sandhya is presently working as an Agricultural Extension Officer in the Department of Agriculture of Government of Andhra Pradesh. She has completed her M.Sc (Ag.) in the Department of Agricultural Economics in Agricultural College, Bapatla of Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University. She is having two research articles to her credit. Her interested areas include Agricultural Marketing, Price analysis of agricultural commodities and International trade of Indian agriculture.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR K.N. Ravi Kumar
Dr. K. Nirmal Ravi Kumar is presently working as an Associate Professor and Head (Agricultural Economics) in Agricultural College, Mahanandi in Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University. He had a brilliant academic career and he specialized in ‘Agricultural Marketing’ both in his post-graduate and doctoral programmes. He is actively involved both in agricultural research and teaching activities during the past nine years in the University. He published 40 articles in popular agricultural journals. He also contributed two technical bulletins on economic aspects of irrigation water management highlighting the research priorities in major irrigation commands of Andhra Pradesh and need based technological interventions to address the same during his active stint in “Andhra Pradesh Water Management Project”, an international project funded by The Royal Netherlands Embassy. His interested areas include International trade of Indian agriculture, Farming systems approach, Irrigation water management etc. The following are the other major contributions (books) by the same author (1) Microeconomic analysis in Agriculture in 2 Vols; (2) Objective Agricultural Economics; (3) World Trade Agreement and Indian Agriculture: Implementation Experience and (4) Indian Agriculture in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities.
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