Institutional agricultural credit in Nagaland: Some empirical evidences

This paper attempts to examine the issues and challenges of institutional credit to agriculture sector in Nagaland. The state is an agrarian economy, and basically practices traditional methods of farming on terrace and jhum field. Institutional borrowing for agriculture activity is not known until very recently. Non-institutional borrowing are very negligible and most farming household are self-finance. Institutional credit is making a positive alteration in the methods of agriculture cultivation. However, the analysis found that the general awareness about institutional credit to rural farmers is limited which brings about wrong conception of borrowing for agriculture cultivation, besides there is inadequate facilities for credit delivery in the rural areas and non-functional informal credit. The situation calls for concerted efforts to augment the flow of credit to agriculture, alongside with exploring new innovations through better use of technology and related processes to the agriculture farmers.