Rural Credit: Mystery of the Missing Households K Seeta Prabhu Avadhoot Nadkarni C V Achuthan The substantial decline in the proportion as well as in the absolute number of households reporting indebtedness between 1971 and 1981 at both the all-India level and the states level, as revealed by the All-India Debt and Investment Survey, 1981-82, is indeed an intriguing development. This is particularly so as the decline has occurred during a period which has witnessed a phenomenal expansion in the institutional credit network in the rual areas. This paper is an attempt at understanding this issue in some detail.
