On the occasion of Kisan Diwas, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research celebrates ‘Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan’ Week from 23 December to 29 December every year to commemorate the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Late Chaudhary Charan Singh. The celebration is being held in honour of their significant contribution to promoting the use of science for the benefit of farmers.
This year, Krishi Jagran is also organizing various webinars and events during the Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan Week from 23-29 December 2021.
On the second day of the ‘Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan’ week, i.e. December 24, Krishi Jagran organized a webinar on financial literacy among farmers. This session was moderated by MC Dominic, Founder and Editor in Chief of Krishi Jagran and Agriculture World.
The first speaker of the session was Amarjeet Kaur a women farmer and Entrepreneur from Ambala, Haryana who spoke on the grounded reality and need for financial literacy among farmers by pointing out that although the government is indeed providing the farmers with a lot of subsidies on farm implements and machinery it’s the farmers themselves who would customize and buy the right implements using the right subsidies so that it helps them to maximize their leads and not fall into debt traps.
She specifically mentioned how some farmers with 5 acres of land end up purchasing the same machinery that a farmer with 20 acres of land has bought because they don’t have the requisite knowledge of implements to choose ones that are cheaper and would suit their farmland’s better. Kaur ended her address to the audience by vehemently supporting the use of webinars and,Melas etc. to educate the farmers more.
Ashish Agarwal, President and Head of Agri-Business from Bajaj Alliance, General Insurance Co. Ltd was the second speaker of the event who began his address to the audience by complimenting the previous speaker for her in-depth knowledge and understanding of the importance of financial literacy but continued on to add that financial literacy is nothing but money management and is important to all especially those who have an irregular flow of income like farmers.
He went on to cite that about 60 per cent of a farmers yearly income is usually spent on repayment of loans and their interest. This according to Ashish is due to a lot of uncertainties like the weather, market, Government policies etc., which according to him could be properly mitigated if farmers used schemes like the Kisan credit card Schemes to actually help boost their production instead of using it for consumption. He ended his speech by saying better management of finances and proper utilization of government schemes and subsidies is the only way for farmers to not fall into Debt traps often.
An in-depth analysis on this topic was provided by Rajat Dhar, the Director of the Indian Investors Federation, who passionately spoke that financial literacy, is a tool that is solely aimed at doubling farmers’ income and hence should be used as such. Citing Numerous examples from Erode, Tamil Nadu to Assam Rajat showcased how finances can only be utilised if farmers have in-depth knowledge of the circumstances of the industry around them which according to him, could only be acquired once people start involving themselves with the banks to acquire knowledge in order for them choose where to invest in.
Shrinivas Rao Muppaneni the Group Chief Information Officer of Telanga State Corporative Bank was the fourth speaker of this webinar and while elaborating on the importance of crop loans (which was also a subject that was touched upon by the previous speakers) he spoke on various important government schemes that the farmer should know about and how farmers should effectively utilize these schemes to maximize their profits.
The next speaker was Parveen Yadav a Senior Manager from the Punjab National Bank in Hisar, Haryana who spoke about how digital literacy especially digital literacy on cyber security played an important role in financial literacy. He vehemently spoke about how farmers still don’t understand the importance of not sharing their sensitive information like OTP’s and their Ids with fraudsters which has led to a lot of irreparable losses and how it’s an important part of financial literacy which is often glossed over. While speaking on the matter of Kisan Credit Cards he also mentioned the importance of keeping a good credit score and how it will play a crucial role in farmers’ income in the days to come.
Rekha Tiwari a Senior Scientist from a Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Ujjain Madhya Pradesh - the last speaker of the day who laid out the ground-level reality that she has seen in the KVKs. She spoke on how upliftment of a community was only possible if they were provided with the right knowledge at the right time.
She also mentioned that people in rural areas are very nervous when it comes to banks due to the long time it usually takes to process requests in banks and to help mitigate them how SHGs and other groups were important to help them understand and approach the banking sector in the right way.
