ADDRESSING AGRARIAN DISTRESS IN

INDIA: ARE LOAN WAIVERS AN

EFFECTIVE SOLUTION?
INTRODUCTORY MACROECONOMICS
TERM PAPER

Deepjyot Ahluwalia
Simran Singh
Tanya Gupta
Zainab Shamsi
 Abstract

Agrarian distress in India presents a disturbing economic issue. As such, it has become a
contentious matter in Indian politics. One of the most popular policy interventions has been that
of loan waivers. This paper attempts to discern the impact of farm loan relief schemes on the
agricultural sector by conducting a review of existing literature in the field. We find significant
empirical evidence to suggest that loan waivers do not alleviate agrarian distress. In light of this
observation, we suggest certain alternative policy interventions which can better address this
enduring issue in the Indian economy.
 1. INTRODUCTION
Farm loan waiver policies have been prevalent in the Indian economy for decades now, and have
several political, financial, social and economic implications that affect the nation in ways larger than
expected. This prominent policy choice has gained momentum over the years as more than a
temporary palliative, and has emerged as a plausible anchor for the country’s wellbeing.

Since the time they have been introduced, farm loan waivers have caught the imagination of a
plethora of economists and analysts, each providing a refreshing and extensive view of the causes,
effects and precautions of the same. Policy makers, who wholeheartedly support the policy, bring to
light its many benefits and how society is in a dire need for waivers. They talk about the need for
waivers and role they play in relieving the burden and stress of debt, especially on the shoulders of
those who face atrocities and stagnation economically. They bring to light the positive and required
implications that society craves, be it better and more productive investments, strengthening the
economy from its very roots, providing for the underprivileged, or fighting stagnation in development
of rural and urban areas. On the flip side of the coin, there are a number of economic and political
scholars who put forward an extremely critical view of waivers. Through their studies, they bring to
us possible negative, undesirable repercussions, which include: lower investments, lesser
productivity, intensification of debt stress, benefit for only a certain section of society.

In this paper, we aim to study the impacts of loan waivers on the agricultural sector to answer the
question: are they an effective solution to agrarian distress? This is done through a review of the
existing literature in the field. We further put forward certain policy implications, which deal both
with how waivers could be better implemented and with other alternatives which can better address
the issue of agrarian distress in India.
 2. AGRARIAN DISTRESS IN INDIA
India’s agrarian distress is not a new phenomenon, and its causes aren’t simply natural epidemics such as
droughts or floods, but lie in the structural inefficiencies of the Indian agricultural sector itself. In spite of
employing 42% of the workforce (in 2018), the sector only contributes 6.4% to the national GDP (World
Bank Data Indicator). The growth rates of agriculture production from the 1990’s till the mid-2000’s was
lower than that in 1980s (World Bank,2005). Often, government policy has worsened the situation, and
even when schemes are created to improve the crisis, they are ineffectively implemented or taken
advantage of.

Local farmers suffered in 1995 when India joined the World Trade Organisation and they lost protection
from imports, resulting in lower prices due to increased competition. Around the same time, the
government as part of fiscal reforms rationalised many of the subsidies provided on essential inputs such
as fertilizers, seeds, electricity etc. The minimum support price scheme, introduced to help bridge the gap
of higher input prices, which said that the government would purchase harvest from farmers at a
minimum fair price, that would be higher than the market price, was not accessible to small and marginal
farmers. Investment in agriculture was declining or stagnant at best, with public capital formation
continually falling and the growth of public expenditure on agricultural research plateauing down.

Farmers were also dissuaded from purchasing existing HYV (Higher Yielding Variety) seeds and improved
fertilizers and implements due to a lack of access to formal credit systems, which meant that without
subsidized rates, in order to use more productive inputs farmers had to resort to informal sources of
credit. This in turn meant that many families were caught in debt traps due to exorbitantly high rates of
interest. While over the years the government has to a certain extent been successful in bringing farmers
into the formal system, the problem of high rates of indebtedness still persists.

Even in cases where Minimum Support Price schemes have worked and farmers have access to the best
inputs, the Indian agricultural sector as a whole suffers from inadequate infrastructure for storage and
infrastructure, which means that often farmers can’t get crops to markets with more demand or can’t
store them and wait for better prices. An estimated 1/3rd of harvest spoils every year due to in efficient
storage and supply chain infrastructure, and less than half of the total agricultural land is irrigated,
meaning that many farmers depend on increasingly unreliable monsoons for their incomes. Lack of
options and capital to self-process their harvest leads tillers to be dependent on often exploitative
middlemen, so even if their produce reaches the best possible markets, they don’t often reap the
benefits.

A significant underlying problem, and a possible cause of policy failure in the sector, is the significant
inequalities amongst farmers themselves. While schemes such as Minimum Support Price are
implemented, they disproportionately advantage large farmers, and remain inaccessible to small and
marginal farmers, who account for 86.2% of all farmers in India, but own just 47.3% of the crop area
(Agricultural Census, Census of India).

Even large farmers have increasing smaller plots of land, because of the Indian inheritance pattern. The
average land holding of an Indian farmer has shrunk to 1.1 hectares in 2018 from 1.6 hectares from three
years ago (Agricultural Census, Census of India). These small plots are simply inefficient to grow crops,
and farmers don’t have an incentive to invest in fixed capital that would increase
productivity. Furthermore, many schemes are not helpful to the most vulnerable group, being the
landless labourers, who work in farms owned by others and are often paid below minimum wage. Many
of these families lost their land under British rule due to the Zamindari system, and the government is
implementing land reforms such as ‘Land to the Tiller’ in order to address the institutional issues of the
agricultural sector.

In 2016, demonetisation exacerbated already existing problems and introduced new ones. Payments
from government procurement centres, which offer farmers a better price than competing markets were
delayed due to lack of available cash, and forcing farmers to sell their produce for lower prices, or face
delayed payments. The timing was particularly bad in the face of the fact that the 2016-17 monsoon was
plentiful after two bad years, resulting in higher than usual supply and lower prices.

The Indian agrarian crisis has deep seated roots in institutional and structural issues of the sector, and the
practices of Indian farmers which need to be addressed in order for any of its consequences to be
resolved.
 3. IMPACT OF LOAN WAIVERS ON THE AGRICULTURAL
SECTOR
One of the professed objectives of loan waiver schemes is to reduce debt overhang in agricultural
households and provide incentives for fresh investment. Debt overhang refers to a debt burden so large
that it cannot borrow more money to finance even productive investment. By reducing high levels of
indebtedness, collateral can be cleared to allow access to fresh loans. However, Kanz (2012) found that
the overall number of loan application after the 2008 waiver was low and did not differ between
households who had received a full waiver, and those who had received a partial waiver. According to
Jain and Raju (2011), only 3% of beneficiary farmers applied for fresh loans in the post-waiver period.
Chakroborty & Gupta (2017) found that that beneficiaries of the 2011 UP waiver scheme made
unproductive utilization of their cleared collateral, as evidenced by higher consumption expenditures
and lower productivity as a result of decreased investment expenditure. This tendency was also found
amongst households who has prior knowledge of the scheme as opposed to those who did not, indicating
significant moral hazard.

Periods after loan waivers see a significant decline in availability of formal credit. Studying the UP Rin
Maafi Yojana of 2011, Chakraborty and Gupta (2017) found that credit disbursement had declined by
over 90% in the period following the waiver scheme. This is attributed to bankers’ anticipation of adverse
borrower behaviour. Moreover, Kanz (2012) observed a marked shift away from formal credit sources
and toward informal credit sources. De & Tantri (2014) observe that loan waivers create ex-post
inefficiency in the credit market, as expectations of future waivers make loan recovery difficult. Loan
waivers also generate ex-ante inefficiency, as lenders engage in credit rationing in anticipation of adverse
borrower behaviour. The finding of credit-rationing above is supported by Kanz and Gine (2014) who
conclude that bank lending becomes more conservative after the implementation of such waiver
schemes. They find that banks reallocate credit away from districts with high-program exposure
(districts with high indebtedness before the waiver) and towards districts with low-program exposure
(low levels of indebtedness) to improve efficiency of credit allocation.

An important argument against loan waivers is that they have the potential to induce moral hazard and
hence increase strategic default. There exists ample empirical evidence in support of this argument. Kanz
and Gine (2014), on analysing the 2008 farm loan waiver, found a strong negative impact on loan
performance, with the increase in defaults concentrated amongst borrowers who had previously been
in good standing. This is likely due to the fact that the waiver scheme only covered defaulters, and
provided no benefits to those who made loan repayments on time. Similarly, De & Tantri (2014) observed
a negative impact on repayment behaviour of farmers after the 2008 waiver. This effect was observed
across the three categories studied i.e. those who received a full waiver, those who received a partial
waiver, and those who received no waiver. The effects were observed to be the most negative for non-
beneficiaries. Moreover, Kanz (2012) also found that households who received a full debt waiver were
significantly less concerned by the reputational consequences of future default. This claim is
substantiated by the findings of Jain and Raju, 2011, who conducted a survey of the response of farmers
to the 2008 loan waiver scheme. They find that after the scheme, 97% of farmers were unwilling to repay
future loans, despite the fact that over a quarter of the surveyed farmers had sufficient income to do so.
In the case on non-beneficiary farmers, 70% expressed regret for repaying their loans on time and 99%
were of the opinion that the scheme encouraged wilful default.

Despite a significant and persistent reduction in level of household debt (Kanz, 2012), bailout schemes
do not translate into positive real effects on the economy in terms of investment, productivity,
consumption and wages. Jain & Raju (2011) find that, after the 2008 waiver, the intention to use the
waived off amount for consumption and investment was negligible. Gine & Kanz (2014) found no
improvement in agricultural productivity, and no positive effect on either consumption expenditure or
rural wages after the 2008 waiver scheme. Investment expenditures of unconditional relief recipients of
the 2008 waiver scheme were actually 15% lower than partial relief recipients (Kanz, 2012). Further, post-
waiver productivity of such households was also lower than partial relief recipients (Chakraborty &
Gupta, 2017) (Kanz, 2012). This could be explained by a decline in access to formal sources of credit, and
an increased reliance on informal sources as explained above. It may further be postulated that while it is
possible that the waiver created positive incentives for investment, this effect was completely offset by
reallocation of credit away from highly indebted districts (Xavier & Kanz, 2014).

Employing a unique methodology, Mukherjee, Subramanian, and Tantri (2014) have discerned between
distressed and non-distressed borrowers in their cost-benefit analysis of loan waivers. Distressed
borrowers are those who defaulted due to adverse weather shock, whereas non-distressed defaulters
refer to those who defaulted despite favourable weather conditions. Their findings indicate a positive
impact of the 2008 waiver on distressed borrowers, but an overwhelmingly negative impact on the
non-distressed or strategic defaulters. Distressed beneficiaries showed improvement in loan
performance and a decrease in probability of default after the waiver as compared to distressed non-
beneficiaries. On the other hand, there was no difference in loan performance between beneficiaries and
non-beneficiaries of the non-distressed borrower category. Further, non-distressed beneficiaries face
severe credit-rationing in the aftermath of the waiver.

Through an analysis of weather patterns, Mukherjee, Subramanian, and Tantri (2014) also conclude that
the number of non-distressed beneficiaries of the 2008 waiver outnumbered the distressed beneficiaries.
It is likely then, that the increase in agricultural NPAs compared to total NPAs that was observed post-
2008 was a result of the debt waiver program.

Loan waivers are designed to provide relief to those farmers who are not able to repay their institutional
loans. In other words, these schemes can only benefit those farmers who have access to, and make use
of formal lines of credit. However, only about 15% of small and marginal farmers have access to formal
credit (Banik, Are Loan Waivers a Panacea for Rural Distress? , 2018). This is not surprising, as the 2011
Socio Economic and Caste Census estimates that 56.41% of all rural households are landless. Further, in
the aftermath of loan waivers, formal lending institutions engage in significant credit rationing. This
causes small and marginal farmers to rely increasingly on informal credit, which produce great financial
burden by virtue of higher interest rates. Tripathi (2015) suggests that policy interventions over the
years have been more favourable to large farmers than to small and marginal farmers, and have failed
at integrating the latter into the formal credit market. There has been a marked diversion of
institutional credit to large farmers, mainly at the cost of the small and marginal farmers who have been
forced to rely on informal sources for 85% of their credit needs. This conclusion is further substantiated
by Banik (2018) who states that large farmers (who do not receive waivers) receive more institutional
credit after loan waivers at the expense of the small and marginal category (who suffer credit rationing).
He estimates that this benefit may amount to Rs.535 crores annually. Thus, loan waivers seem to mainly
be beneficial to large farmers, and not the target group of small and marginal farmers.

In the face of overwhelmingly negative empirical evidence against farm loan waivers the question arises-
why are they such a popular policy initiative with different governments? Cole (2009) that election cycles
induce credit booms in agricultural credit in election years. These booms, however, come at a cost: they
induce substantially higher default rates. Gine and Kanz (2014) confirm that defaults are vulnerable to
electoral cycles that this pattern is magnified by loan waivers.

Phadnis and Gupta find that the occurrence of farm loan waivers in election manifestos has been
increasing steadily in recent years. They claim overwhelming evidence (17 of 18 waivers) in favour of the
conjecture that waivers are timed to match the electoral cycle. They argue that farm loan waivers are
driven by a political agenda rather than an ideological/philosophical belief in the benefit of waivers. On
analysing the size and degree of loan waivers and their relevance with political support, it was found that
large loan waivers, brought larger attention and support to the parties implementing them, and hence
became an integral way of swaying votes. Further, loans implemented early in a party’s tenure show
poorer electoral prospects than those implemented close to elections. Larger loan waivers also have
more political sway than small-scale waivers.
 3. POLICY IMPLICATIONS
There does exist room for improvement in the design and implementation of waiver programs. This is
explained as follows:

The findings of Mukherjee, Subramanian and Tantri (2014), as elaborated above, highlight the
importance of discerning between distressed and non-distressed defaulters, and only permitting
waivers to the distressed category. The paper also suggests a mechanism for the above, namely, rainfall.
The absence of good irrigation facilities and flood prevention measures means that the amount and
timing of rainfall is a crucial determinant of the crop. Thus, those farmers who have suffered from
drought or excessive rainfall are likely to be genuine defaulters. De and Tantri (2014) also suggest that
not all government interventions in debt contracts are likely to have adverse consequences. However, for
them to have positive results would require significant political and structural reform. The main causes of
the negative consequences of loan waiver programs is anticipation of future waivers, and extensions of
repayment dates beyond the due date. Controlling and minimizing these factors would require strict
enforcement of debt contracts, and giving more flexibility to loan officers to deal with bad debt.

However, no matter how efficiently loan waiver programs are designed they are bound to cause harm to
the credit culture in rural areas, both on the part of the borrowers and the lenders. This is supported by
our findings in section 2. Further, loan waivers do little to address the true causes of agrarian distress in
India. In light of this, we put forward certain alternative policy interventions.

Jain and Raju (2011) further highlight the importance of providing financial management education to
farmers as their study finds that older, more financially knowledgeable farmers have lower rates of
default than younger, in experienced farmers. This suggestion is mirrored by Banik (2018), who points out
that farmers are not aware of basic financial products like crop insurance, cattle/livestock insurance and
agricultural futures.

Banik (2018) has also suggested certain supply-side interventions such as reforms in the Agricultural
Produce and Market Committee (APMC) so that middlemen can be prevented from siphoning off all
profits and farmers can sell produce directly to the market, hence increasing their income.

There is much scope for improvement of credit delivery to the agricultural sector (Golait, 2007). Banks
are hesitant to extend credit to small and marginal farmers because they deem it too expensive to
disburse and monitor the repayment of such loans. This is aggravated by political interventions in debt
contracts, and poorly delineated property rights in rural areas which make it difficult to enforce loan
repayment. Improvement in rural credit delivery can have an impact on agricultural production and
reduction of poverty if the focus is on tackling issues of sustainability, operation efficiency, recovery
performance, small farmer coverage and balanced sectoral development (Jayaraman & Puhazhendhi,
1999).

New research commissioned by Tata Trusts and Copenhagen Consensus for the India Consensus project,
Rajasthan Priorities (Banik & Bakshi, 2018), suggests alternatives to loan waivers which would have a
higher benefit-to-cost ratio. These include increasing government expenditure on building more canals
and warehouses, on rural electrification, and to operate more e-markets. E-markets or e-mandis could
also result in better prices (Banik & Bakshi, 2018). Regulated markets suffer from issues like lower
market size, lack of price discovery because of buyer cartelization, and lack of information related to
product standards. E-markets could help achieve better prices by allowing direct market access and a
transfer from middle-men to farmers

Mittal (2017) has showed that waiving formal loans for land holders with less than two hectares would
cost 11,731 crores while the benefits will be lower at 9,537 crores. Benefit-to-cost ratio of alternatives
mentioned above have also been examined. Most small farmers do not risk growing perishable crops
because of storage problems. Building more warehouses and storage facilities will reduce waste of
perishable fruits, vegetables and milk that command a higher market price than staple crops. For
instance, Rajasthan’s total requirement for storing milk, fruits and vegetables is 74,889 tonnes according
to The National Centre for Cold Chain Development (NCCD). Providing pack houses and trucks would
cost 5,985 crores. The benefits are more than 15 times the cost.

A bill has been developed by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, which includes two
types of reform that go beyond a one-time loan waiver to protect distressed farmers suffering from
uncontrollable circumstances (Vissa, 2018). First, it guarantees access to institutional credit to not only
land-owning farmers but also sharecroppers, tenants, adivasi and women farmers, and animal-rearers.
All farmers would be registered and provided with Kisan credit cards. Often, marginal and landless
farmers receive less or no credit from the formal sector thereby putting them at the risk of predatory
lending by moneylenders in the informal sector. Tenant farmers who lease land from other land owners
are especially vulnerable. The NSSO Situation Assessment Survey (2013) showed that the average debt
from institutional sources for small and marginal farmers was only 17,570 per household, and 1,41,804
for medium and large farmers. The Reserve Bank of India did issue guidelines in 2014 for
extending loans to Bhoomi Heen Kisan (landless farmers) and for a debt-swapping scheme to convert
informal loans of farmers into bank loans, but they have remained on paper. Second, it establishes
farmers’ distress and disaster relief commissions at the national and State levels, based on the model
of Kerala’s Farmers’ Debt Relief Commission. The Commission will recommend certain areas that are
affected by natural disasters and extensive pest attacks to be declared as distress-affected. Alternative
measures of debt-relief will apply to these areas including loan rescheduling, interest waiver, one-time
settlement, discharge of debt in instalments, or, in an extreme situation, immediate discharge of debt.
Instead of providing loan waivers in bulk (majorly during an election year), such reforms allow round the
year engagement with distressed farmers & targeted solution to their problems.

THE KALIA SCHEME: Income/investment support to farmers is also an alternative, one that has been
implemented by a few state governments. The Odisha government has launched the KALIA scheme i.e.
Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation which aims to provide financial, livelihood
and cultivation support along with insurance support to small, marginal and landless farmers. Under this
scheme, financial assistance of Rs 25,000 per farm family over five seasons will be provided to small and
marginal farmers to enable farmers to buy inputs like seeds, fertilizers, etc. from 2018-19 to 2021-22.
Financial Assistance of Rs 12,500 will be provided to each landless agricultural household for agricultural
allied activities like animal rearing, mushroom & honey cultivation, pisciculture etc. Crop loans up to Rs
50,000 will be interest free. The KALIA scheme includes a life insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh as well as a
personal accident cover of the same amount. While the effective implementation of such a scheme may
be a challenge, it seems to be a good alternative to loan waivers. Such schemes can help stabilise farmer
incomes and provide immediate relief (Patnaik, 2019; see also 'KALIA' a better alternative to farm loan
waivers? Odisha scheme decoded, 2019).
 4.CONCLUSION
As evidenced by our findings in section 3, existing empirical evidence points overwhelmingly towards the
inefficiency of loan waiver programs as a solution to agrarian distress. Several studies suggest that
waivers lead to a heavy deterioration in agricultural credit culture. After waiver programs, access to
formal credit declines in rural areas, as lending institutions engage in heavy credit rationing. On the part
of the borrowers, waivers induce significant moral hazard, as they refuse to pay back loans in anticipation
of future bailouts. Contrary to claims by politicians, farm loan waivers do not produce any real effects on
the economy i.e. they lead to no improvements in investment, productivity and consumption of
agricultural households. On the contrary, they actually a decrease in agricultural productivity, likely due
to increased reliance on informal credit. Further, instead of small and marginal farmers, it is mainly large
farmers who benefit from such a policy initiative. In light of this, we attempt to understand why loan
waivers are a popular policy intervention with governments and find that loan waivers may be motivated
by political motives and vote bank politics more than finding solutions to the issue of agrarian distress
itself.

Since farm loan waivers fail to truly address the agricultural crisis in India, we put forward certain
alternatives. Structural reforms like improving the flow of credit to agricultural areas, increasing
government expenditure on canals and warehouses, rural electrification, and increasing e-markets are
required. The bill developed by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee furthers suggests a
two-fold reform i.e. provision of institutional credit to all farmers including sharecroppers, tenants,
adivasi and women farmers, and animal-rearers, through Kisan credit cards & establishment of farmers’
distress and disaster relief commissions at the national and State levels. Lastly, Odisha government’s
KALIA scheme provides an income and investment support model that can be explored as a solution to
farmers’ distress.

Agrarian distress has historically been a pervasive problem in India and has deep-seated roots. In such a
scenario, loan waivers address more the symptom than the disease itself. Instead of implementing
politically favourable policies, efforts have to be directed towards structural reform. While challenging,
such reforms can go a long way in addressing agrarian distress on a long-term basis and present a better
alternative to short-sighted loan waiver programs.
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