Rural indebtedness is a major development challenge confronting India. In 2018, scores of farmers protested rising household debt, and the popular coverage of the time asserted that farmers were under crushing debt. Combining data from the All-India Debt and Investment Survey with other sources and using a class analysis, I interrogate this “crushing debt” narrative. Rural households, depending on the socioeconomic and contextual vulnerabilities that they experience, are indebted in different ways. The rural elite borrow more loans and have higher loan amounts, while asset-poor households are more dependent on informal credit sources and also pay higher rates of interest. Households from the wage worker class are more likely to be over-indebted relative to others. I further find that petty commodity producers bear less debt burden and are less likely to be over-indebted relative to other classes. These findings underscore the fact that rural indebtedness is a nuanced problem that manifests in a multitude of ways across India.

中文翻译：

---

印度农村的债务等级和脆弱性：统计概览*

农村债务是印度面临的主要发展挑战。2018 年，数十名农民抗议家庭债务上升，当时的热门报道称农民负债累累。将全印度债务和投资调查的数据与其他来源的数据结合起来，并使用类别分析，我审问了这种“沉重的债务”叙述。农村家庭，根据他们所经历的社会经济和环境脆弱性，以不同的方式负债。农村精英借贷更多，贷款金额更高，而资产贫乏家庭更依赖非正规信贷来源，也支付更高的利率。工薪阶层的家庭相对于其他家庭更有可能负债累累。我进一步发现，小商品生产者的债务负担较轻，相对于其他类别而言，负债过多的可能性较小。这些发现强调了这样一个事实，即农村债务是一个微妙的问题，在印度以多种方式表现出来。