Accessibility of Bank Credit by the Muslim Minorities in West Bengal – A Case Study

Abstract

The study on credit facilities to Muslim minority community in West Bengal initially deals with some aspects of credit facilities that the Muslim minority community of West Bengal, may avail of. Issues related to availability, accessibility and utilization of such facilities from the different sources are taken up. The two main sources of credit namely the formal and the informal, the constituent components of which include the banks, financial institutions, govt. organizations, money lenders, friends, relatives etc. are touched upon in this study. The study derives its theoretical background from the rich body of the literature that has developed over the years on credit transactions formal as well as informal in the agrarian economy. The primary focus of this research is on interlinked transactions. It has been examined whether interlinked transactions may exist in the non-agrarian sphere of the activity profile of the Muslim minority community, so far as their relations are concerned. The main aspects of the study are formal credit sector versus informal credit sector dichotomy, comparative strength of the informal sector, sources of formal and informal credit, accessibility and functioning of formal and informal credit & market interlinkages.