Beyond CIBIL: India Needs a Farmer Credit Score Built for Seasons, Not Salaries

• India's current credit scoring models, like CIBIL, are designed for urban salaried individuals, failing to account for the seasonal income and unique risks faced by farmers.
• The farm economy operates on crop cycles (Kharif, Rabi, Zaid) with seasonal income peaks and upfront expenses, making monthly repayment structures unsuitable.
• Applying urban benchmarks to rural borrowers systematically excludes farmers from formal finance, pushing them towards informal lenders and debt traps.
• A Bharat-centric credit scorecard should track cash flows aligned with crop cycles, incorporate long-term farm histories, land quality, irrigation, and community-based recovery mechanisms.
• Digitisation, AI, GPS, and satellite mapping can enable a fair, dynamic, and predictive scorecard, requiring collaboration between agri-tech firms, banks, and government bodies.

Why It Matters: India must develop a farmer-centric credit score aligned with seasonal agricultural realities to ensure financial inclusion.