Impact of demographic and psychographic factors on the effectiveness of agricultural financing intervention schemes

Abstract

The development of agriculture continues to remain critical for India s employment, poverty reduction and overall economic growth. Therefore, the provision of credit finance among the stakeholders particularly to agri entrepreneurs is assumed as one of the pressing tool for boosting the agriculture. Hence Government has initiated many schemes and programmes, but the effectiveness and efficiency of these schemes and programmes depends on proper need identification by policy makers and adoption by target population. In Jammu and Kashmir these schemes include Zafran mission financing scheme and seed capital scheme in horticulture, apiculture, floriculture, animal husbandry etc, under the drastic employment crises. However there have been a sea change in macroeconomic policy of state during the period of pull and push strategies between self employment (with a comprehensive package of incentives like subsidy and availability of finance) and public sector employment (by declining public sector incentives and benefits like pension and salary) which have its impact on socio-economic conditions of state unemployed youth. Further under these schemes a large amount of credit is disbursed to conventional and entrepreneurial agricultural beneficiaries in accordance with the eligibility criteria framed by the concerned authorities. In this direction, present study is an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of Agri Financing and endeavor to assess the present procedure of financing through demographics. Further in, support of literature, the study attempts to evaluate the role of psychographic factors as successes of these schemes with maximum benefits and minimum adverse consequences include assessment of various dimensions of risk propensity, locus of control and entrepreneurial potential. Moreover, an attempt has been made to examine the role of various demographic characteristics on all the variables under reference...