Indebtedness among Agricultural Labourers from Deprived Castes: Towards an Explanation

India's largest share of poor is located among agricultural labourers belonging to Scheduled Castes. The poverty in this group persists and gets perpetuated due to continued discrimination in the employment opportunities and wage market. Owing to the low wages, they are perceptually under debt burden. This issue becomes sharp due to interlocking of labour and credit market. The insignificant participation of this group in the formal credit market makes the situation worse. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse the indebtedness and market participatian of the deprived castes especially on the background of one of the most radical institutianal changes, i.e., lanf reforms. We have used secondary level information available from different sources in order to analyse the issue. The study concludes that due to marginalisation in land market as well as extremely weak bargaining position in the labour market, the indebteduess of this group has been increasing. This situation is aggravated by the relative neglect of this group by formal credit agencies.