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Institutional Farm Credit Through Kisan Credit Cards: Comparative Evidence on Productivity, Income and Financial Autonomy

Research articleOpen accessVol. 15, Issue 8, July 2026

  • Dr. Abhishek Kumar SinghAssistant Professor, Department of Commerce, M.M.H.College , Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) India
  • Dr. Inamur RahamanAssistant Professor, Department of Commerce, M.M.H.College , Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) India
  • Mohd HamidResearch Scholar, Department of Commerce, M.M.H.College, Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) India
Published
31 July 2026
Licence
CC BY 4.0
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Abstract

— The present paper tries to establish the extent to which short-term institutional credit for agriculture through the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) has helped in improving the productivity levels of crops, incomes from agriculture and financial autonomy of farmers’ households. A cross-sectional survey of 480 agricultural households – 240 KCCs and 240 non-KCCs – was carried out in three districts of western Uttar Pradesh for the crop year 2023-24. A logit model was used to find out the correlates of KCCs while the average treatment effects on the treated (ATET) was worked out by PSM with nearest-neighbour and kernel estimates for input usage, yield, income and reliance on non-institutional sources of credit. A FAI, based on five variables, was constructed by PCA. KCC households showed an ATET of 12.3% higher wheat yield, 20.1% higher income from farm business per hectare, and 22.6 percentage points lower dependence on moneylenders. The FAI was 0.176 points higher among KCC households. It seems that the credit-productivity relationship works mainly through input intensification and no distress sale.

Keywords: Kisan Credit Card, institutional credit, farm productivity, financial autonomy, propensity score matching, agricultural households

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References

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How to cite

Dr. Abhishek Kumar Singh, Dr. Inamur Rahaman, Mohd Hamid (2026). Institutional Farm Credit Through Kisan Credit Cards: Comparative Evidence on Productivity, Income and Financial Autonomy. International Journal for Research in Management & Pharmacy, 15(8). https://doi.org/10.63345/ijrmp.v15.i8.1

Licence

This article is open access, published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Copyright remains with the authors.