Interestingly, the group found the incidence of indebtedness and the average amount of debt was the lowest for the most deprived group, the Scheduled Tribes. However, the incidence of indebtedness was higher than the all-India average (of 48.6 per cent) among the Scheduled Castes (50.2 per cent) and Other Backward Classes (51.4 per cent). However, as the panel warns, though only about half the country's farm households are indebted to institutional or non-institutional sources, a large proportion of the rest may simply be

"financially excluded".

Headed by Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Director Dr R Radhakrishna, the expert group (that included NABARD Chairman Y P S Thorat, former Union Agriculture Sec retary P V Shenoi and former Syndicate Bank Chairman and Managing Director N Kantha Kumar) has stressed that "the less developed states must get top priority". A "strikingly regional phenomenon", the panel found indebtedness levels low in less developed states and high in agriculturally developed states.

Moreover, "large regional variations in bank credit disbursal" were also found. So while South India with less than 20 per cent of the country's farm households gets 33 per cent of bank credit, Bihar with 8 per cent of farm households gets only 2.4 per cent (the entire eastern region gets much lower credit than its share in farm households).