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has in the introduced banks debt together greatest village money as loans century inhabitants
One of the hindrances to agriculture in India is debt. Most of the cultivators are poor men with little or no capital of their own. For money wherewith to buy seed, oxen and ploughs, they depend on the or money-lender. He is willing to lend as much as they want, so long they give their land in pledge for the loan. But he takes advantage of their poverty and ignorance and forces them to pay such enormous amounts interest that once they get into his clutches, they rarely get out.
The first object of the Co-operative Credit movement is to rescue the zamindar from and advance his capital to develop his farm on easy terms of interest and repayment. Co-operative credit was started in Germany in the middle of the 19th by a philanthropic man called Raiffeisen. He lived in an agricultural district, where the farmers were desperately poor and hopelessly in debt to the Jewish -lenders. To help them, he started his village banks. His idea was this. An ordinary bank will not lend money to a single poor farmer because he no good security to offer. Still, it will lend to a properly organised society of farmers on their united security or co-operative credit. By forming the farmers into a society, he enabled them to borrow enough money from banks on reasonable terms to pay off their debts and free themselves from the -lenders. Then he taught them to invest their savings in their little bank until a sufficient fund had been collected to enable them to grant small to the members for developing their farms. His chief principles for banks were: 1. Each village must have its own bank. 2. Only the of the village could be members. 3. Only the members could receive loans. 4. The members must appoint their own officers to manage the bank from among themselves
These were a marvellous success. In a few years, the money-lender was driven out, the farmers were independent and had their capital, and the district was prosperous.
The Government this system into India twenty years ago, and it has worked wonders. There are thousands of village banks, or Cooperative Credit Societies, all over country, and hundreds of thousands of members. In many places, the zamindars have been freed from debt, given capital on easy terms, taught how to work (cooperation), and have become prosperous farmers.