Chandigarh, Dec. 29 -- Debt burden on Punjab's peasantry has crossed a whopping Rs.1 lakh crore, with a major share, Rs.85,460 crore, owed to commercial banks, a worrying trend given the stringent recovery norms and heavy penalties on defaulters. According to the data procured from the Punjab state farmers' and farm workers' commission up to March 2024, there are 23.28 lakh bank accounts which have taken loans from the commercial banks. The commission was established to examine and review the status of agriculture and allied sectors in the state and that of rural infrastructure; to suggest measures of economically viable and ecologically sustainable agriculture development. Maharashtra has the highest institutional rural debt at Rs.8,38,250 crore, followed by Tamil Nadu at Rs.3,84,139 crore and Andhra Pradesh at Rs.3,09,900 crore. In the states neighbouring Punjab, Haryana's rural debt is close to Punjab at Rs.96,855 crore, while Rajasthan's total debt stands at Rs.1,74,800 crore. The data further reveals that the farmers have taken Rs.10,021 crore loan from the state cooperative banks in 11.94 lakh accounts and Rs.8,583 crore from regional rural banks (RRBs) in 3.15 lakh accounts. The data further shows that the state has 10.53 lakh operational landholdings sharing this debt, translating to an average liability of Rs.9.88 lakh per landholding. Apart from the institutional debt of Rs.1,04,064 crore, the experts say there is non-institutional debt of at least Rs.20,000 crore on the state farmers, which takes the total figures to Rs.1,24,064 crore. What worries the experts working in the agrarian sector is the debt pile-up, which has risen fivefold in the last 20 years from Rs.1.75 lakh per landing holding in 2006. Punjab Agricultural University vice-chancellor SS Gosal said that this trend of rising debt needs a detailed study, and there is a need to find a way out to curb it before things spiral out of control. Former secretary agriculture Kahan Singh Pannu said that the subject of rural indebtedness is evolving fast and is a very complex issue. "During the past 10 years, the debt has risen sharply, for which a detailed study needs to be carried out, on the basis of ownership of land holdings, so as to determine the agriculture credit relation. A large number of agriculturalists have moved away from farming. They have either moved to foreign countries or have adopted an alternative avocation," Pannu said. Pannu pointed out that non-institutional credit is on a fast decline, and is given to those who have credibility, particularly after the farmers are getting disbursal of crop payment (minimum support price) by way of direct benefit transfer (DBT) into their bank accounts. "A worrying phenomenon which is being noticed is the falling share of rural loans from the cooperative banks, as their capacity to lend has reduced. The farmers are not given maximum credit limits (MCLs) easily as they used to get in the past. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has also squeezed its funding in the rural sector," he added. The Supreme Court-appointed five-member committee headed by former Punjab and Haryana high court judge Nawab Singh is likely to incorporate the rural indebtedness in its report. In September 2024, the apex court formed a five-member committee to submit a report on boosting farm income, which also included the minimum support price (MSP) to resolve the grievances of the farmers who were protesting at the Shambhu and Khanauri borders....