PROFILE OF RURAL INDEBTEDNESS 51 (c) Proportion of Institutional and Non-InstitutVQnal Credit, 30 June For Cultivators For Non-cultivators For all Rural Households 1961 1971 1981 1961 1971.1981 1961 1971 1981 Institutional 18.2 31.7 63.2 10.5 10.8 36.7 17.3 29.2 61.2 Non-institutional 81.8 68.3 36.8 89.5 89.2 63.3 82.7 70.8 38.9 All agencies 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 1981 DEBT AND INVESTMENT SURVEY Unlike the earlier decennial surveys on rural debt carried out by the Reserve Bank of India in 1951,1961 and 1972, the 'All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS)' of 1981 was carried out by NSSO as the 37th round of NSS (January to December 198?), This report was first published in the July 19^6 issue of the NSSO organ (Sarvekhana) in an article titled 'A Note on Some Aspects of Indebtedness of Rural and Urban Households based on AIDIS 1982'. Before referring to some of its salient observations it would be worthwhile keeping some of the limitations of this survey in mind. Limitations of the Survey While the statistics about credit supplied by institutional sources can be taken to be fairly accurate, the same cannot be. said about d^ta relating to credit supplied by landlords, moneylenders, traders or even 'relatives and friends', and it can be safely asserted that the outstanding dpbt from these sources is several times more than what the survey indicates.. For example take the following passage: It is found that about 75 per cent of indebted non-cultivator households would get loans without any security while the corresponding percentage among indebted cultivator households was about 55 per ceiit only. The percentage share of debt obtained without any security was about 63 and 38 for these two categories of households. Possibly because of their inability to furnish the required security the non-cultivator households were found to be more dependent on non-institutional moneylenders, etc. That is, the survey wants us to believe that some of these 'non-institutional moneylenders' are such wonderful and benevolent individuals that they supplied as much as 11.20 per cent of the entire