Published Paper Details:

Regional Rural Banks plays a very important role in credit disbursement for meeting the financial needs of farmers. The agrarian economy of Punjab now-a-days faces a severe crisis of repeated crop failures, low yield and high cost of production, non-remunerative produce prices and capital intensive farming, which resulted in heavy farm indebtedness. To revive the rural economy in general and agrarian economy in particular, RRBs need to be strengthened. This study examined the perceptions of beneficiaries of RRBs about social equity based rural development in Punjab. A set of 40 beneficiaries/customers per branch (total 320) from the selected branches of Punjab Gramin Bank (four), Malwa Gramin Bank (two) and Sutlej Gramin Bank (two) in the state of Punjab were considered for data collection & ANOVA was applied to arrive at the Conclusion that RRBs are successful in achieving the social equity based rural development considerably. However, the beneficiaries also faced some problems in getting the benefits of CDPs, which need to be checked and resolved in order to speed up the pace of rural development of Punjab.