ABSTRACT
The private moneylender, who is often simultaneously a landlord or agricultural merchant, exploits the peasant in the most literal sense, burdening him with a load of inextinguishable debt, which is passed on from generation to generation. For India, however, as for other countries, the problem is not to be solved simply by the establishment of financial institutions empowered to make cheap loans to agriculturalists. Many countries have attempted to solve this latter problem simply by giving the major responsibility for stimulating improved methods of production to the state credit agency. The Agricultural Bank of Bolivia, for instance, is enjoined not merely to assist the cultivator financially, but to plan and execute a broad policy of agricultural mechanisation and development. The Agricultural and Industrial Credit Department of the Bank of Brazil was given jurisdiction, in 1952, over an Agricultural Mechanisation Fund.
