Banks can play a leading role in boosting India’s agricultural production. Their role in this respect has become of crucial importance after the nationalization of 20 major banks, and the establishment of co-operative banks, and banks of other types. Various banks have opened their branches even in remote villages. There is now a net work of banks in the countryside. These banks have encouraged the farmer to save for the rainy day. Through persistent publicity, they have brought home to the farmer the advantages of keeping their saving in banks.
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The Indian farmer is proverbially poor. He has no money for the purchase of good seeds, fertilizers and modern implements like tractors. Neither has he any money for the construction of tube wells and store houses. Banks are helping him a lot by advancing loners to him on easy terms. In this way he is saved from the clutches of the indigenous money Landers and agriculture receives a big boost. In this way banks help in modernizing Indian agriculture. As a result, the yield per acre increased. Increased production has made India self-sufficient in food, checked inflation and made the farmer less poor and needy. Banks have also encouraged the farmer to take to poultry and dairy-farming, and loners are advanced for this purpose also.
We are glad to note that the government is quite alive to the problems of the Indian farmers, and the crucial role that the banks can play in boosting agriculture. Loners are being advanced liberally on easy terms by co-operative banks and agricultural development banks. Branches of leading banks are being established even in remote, out of the way villages. No doubt the loners are sometimes not recovered, or a part of them goes to pockets of dishonest middle men and leaders. But the purpose is to increase agricultural production, and since this aim is being achieved we should be satisfied.
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In short the banking industry is bound to play, in times to come, a role of increasing importance in boosting Indian agriculture. The present difficulties of the Indian farmer, let us hope, would soon be over-come and the increased agricultural productions would make food scarcity a matter of the past.