There were specific provisions in the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 both for the establishment of an Agricultural Credit Department (ACD) in the bank and for extending refinance facilities to the cooperative credit system. A seminal landmark in the history of cooperative credit and banking was the All India Rural Credit Survey in 1954, conducted by the Reserve Bank.
Based on the experience of India and several other developing countries, the Committee stressed that: “no form of credit organisation at the rural base will be suitable except the cooperative society”. The integrated scheme of rural credit, introduced pursuant to the Committee’s recommendations, gave a big boost to the country’s cooperative movement. 17.