Utilization pattern of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) among the farmers of Prayagraj district of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.)

Abstract

The rural credit system in India has been instrumental in enhancing production and stimulating investment in agriculture. The rural credit system has to play an important role in this transformation phase and has to face the challenges of supporting the credit requirement of higher order and diverse type for both production and investment purpose. The instrument of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) is one of the key products to improve farmers’ accessibility to bank credit, simplify credit delivery mechanism and provide more flexibility in the use of credit. Hence, the present study was conducted in Prayagraj district of state of Uttar Pradesh to understand the perceived utility of Kisan Credit Card scheme among the farmers. Prayagraj District was selected purposively and a total of 121 respondents were selected for the present study from Jasra block of Prayagraj. The study inferred that majority of respondents belong to various socio-economic profiles. Most of the respondents fall within age of 36-55 years (52.06%) having highest male respondents (90.08%) belongs to general category (45.45%), have family size above 5 member (57.85%), having joint family type (57.85%), have education (77.69%), exclusively engaged in only farming (74.38%), having income upto 2-3 lakh (52.23%). and (40.49%) of the respondents come under the low category followed by medium category (23.14%). Majority of the respondents (65.28%) belong to medium category followed by 18.18 percent of the respondents who belong under low category as for as utility of the KCC is concerned. Variables namely Annual income, social participation, Economic orientation and Risk orientation are found to have significant correlation at 0.5 percent level of significance.