Institutional Finance and Rural Development

Poverty is one of the perennial problems facing the country. It has been acknowledged by social scientists and others that poverty has now become the biggest bottleneck in national development. Right from the attainment of independence in 1947, the Government of India began evincing keen interest in rural development. It had continually modified, supplemented and complemented its policies and programmes and several approaches were given a fair trial. In any programme meant for enhancing the volume of employment and raising productivity, availability of credit is of utmost importance. The banks as well as other financial institutions have thus been accorded a very important role in the development process of the rural economy. In this book efforts have been made by the authors to review the achievements of financial institutions like commercial banks and cooperatives in lending for rural development activities.