Rural Banking and Credit

Immediately after assuming office, the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had set up a one-member High Level Committee on Agricultural Credit through Commercial Banks with R V Gupta (henceforth RVGC).1 This was a clear signal to reemphasise agricultural and, more broadly, rural credit which were otherwise to some extent neglected in the post 1990 period. Earlier, the ministry of finance had constituted a committee in December 1997 under the chairmanship of M Narasimham (henceforth NCR II)2 to:

(i) review the progress in the banking sector with particular reference to the recommendations made by the earlier Narasimham Committee report (NCR I)3 in 1991,