Articles by D Rajasekhar

The NCEUS report is an important step towards bringing unorganised sector workers under some form of social protection. However, the cart of a social security system needs three galloping horses to take it to the destination of a deprivation-free unorganised worker: viable enterprises, successful poverty alleviation programmes and congenial macro policies, none of which is in sight.

Have banking sector reforms improved the share of net bank credit to the agricultural sector? Have profit-oriented norms persuaded commercial banks to neglect the agricultural sector? Does the provision of a credit subsidy reduce the supply of agricultural credit? Can an increase in the lending rate be a suitable measure to reduce the rate of credit subsidy? What is the interest rate elasticity of supply of agricultural credit? What has been the impact of the closure of rural bank branches on the provision of credit to agriculture? This paper addresses these questions by analysing the data on the total outstanding credit provided by the scheduled commercial banks to the agricultural sector during the period 1981 to 2000.

This paper analyses the impact of the economic programmes of SHARE, an NGO in Tamil Nadu, on poverty reduction, with the help of data collected from the households of 84 women members. The economic programmes contributed to savings and income increase for the women. However, the member group was not found to be significantly different from the comparison group in terms of control over income and decision-making.

Simulating Fund Flows in Priority Sector D Rajasekhar Vinod Vyasulu Based on secondary sources and primary data this paper seeks to elaborate the concept of half-life of credit analytically and establishes by simulating flow of loanable funds under different assumptions the time needed for these funds to reach their half-life and examines the factors contributing to the lengthening or shortening of the half-life of credit in Indian banking.

Institutional Credit and Overdues D Rajasekhar G Suvarchala STUDENTS of political economy have been arguing that, in the rural areas, the financial system has been subordinated to the interests of the rural rich. Pointing to the growing political clout of the farmers' organisations, reflected in the prominence of political stalwarts like the late Charan Singh and Devi Lal, it has been argued that the rural bank- ing system has been (mis)used to provide subsidies and easy money for those who belong to this class. Overdues to the banks are only a symptom of this basic malaise. Be that as it may, we are grateful to A S Kahlon for initiating a debate on this important issue (Institutional Credit and Over- dues: Borrowers' Angle', EPW, February 2, 1991) within the narrower framework of the existing financial system. The main argument of the paper is that the loan policies and procedures of lending institutions have impaired the borrowers' ability to secure adequate incremental returns to enable them to repay their loans. Consequently, the over- dues have been mounting. The author, by using evaluation studies, District-Oriented Monitoring (DOM) studies and supply side studies conducted by NABARD in the early 1980s (which are not easily accessible to researchers), highlights the impact of factors like under-financing, tight repayment schedules, absence of initial grace period, short loan maturities and delays in sanctioning of loans, on overdues. While emphasising these points, the author has noted the hiatus between actual implementation and the set guidelines. For instance, as per the guidelines of NABARD, a banker must give 11-15 years' time to the borrower in order to enable him to repay instalments for schemes like dug-well with pumpset. However, in reality the borrowers are provided with only a 10-year term. Similarly, the author has noted the variation between the actual unit cost and amount disbursed in various categories of loans, once again arguing that the shortfalls have contributed to the default. Thus he concentrates on the causes of non- wilful default.