Farmers in peri-urban regions: socio-economic changes and access to finance study for Indian economy

Given the rapid pace of urbanization and expansion of cities, the peri-urban regions become important mostly because of their dynamic and transitional nature. This paper tries to capture the changing nature of socio-economic characteristics and access to different financial activities in the peri-urban regions of India in general and Karnataka in particular. More specifically, the paper examines these changing characteristics among the farmers of the peri-urban regions. Results reveal that urbanization has had impact among the farmers in terms of different socio-economic characteristics, such as, changing nature of their production activities, their asset owning structure, infrastructural improvement, shift in their modes of transport equipment, etc. Besides, farmers experience changes in financial particulars and access to finance in terms of owning of financial assets, increasing number of bank account holders, access to credit, use of that credit, sources of credit, etc. Thus, changes occur in terms of both socio-economic and financial particulars among the farmers as an impact of urbanization. Moreover, these changes vary in different types of peri-urban regions as well.