Source: Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, RBI (2010–11) Note: Since the data on agricultural credit from cooperatives were available only up to 2007/08, figures for the years between 2008/09 and 2010/11 are based on estimates made using the three-year moving average method  At the beginning of the 1980s, cooperatives supplied about half of the total institutional credit while commercial banks had a share of about 40 per cent and RRBs just about 2 per cent.4 The share of commercial banks had increased continuously through the 1980s overtaking the share of the cooperatives.
This trend, however, reversed in the 1990s when the share of commercial banks declined. This is possibly accounted for by the fact that this was a period when banking penetration across the country, as measured by the number of rural branches and average population per branch, showed a fall during this period.