Avg farm household debt Rs 2.03L in state, says MoS

The average debt on farm households in Punjab is Rs 2.03 lakh. This was stated by Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Ramnath Thakur in reply to a question by MP Rachna Banerjee in the Lok Sabha today.

The data provided in the reply revealed that Haryana had an average debt of Rs 1.83 lakh per farm household, Himachal Pradesh Rs 85,825 and Jammu and Kashmir Rs 30,435. The national average is Rs 74,121.

The data is based on the ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India, 2019’ in the 70th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS), the reply read. The average agricultural household indebtedness in the state was the third highest in the country after Kerala (Rs 2.42 lakh) and Andhra Pradesh (Rs 2.45 lakh).

The reply did not have the complete answer to the information that Banerjee had sought on “the details of average amount of debt per farmer in the country during each of the last five years, highlighting trends and challenges”.

1,741 registered startups

Punjab has a total of 1,741 startups registered by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade till December 2024, said Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada in reply to a question by Congress MP Charanjit Channi. As many as 38 have been categorised as closed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. At the same time, Haryana has 8,222 startups and Himachal Pradesh 563. A total of 1,57,706 startups are registered at the national level, which have created over 17.2 lakh jobs since 2019.

Support for women scientists

The Centre has supported as many as 2,076 women scientists and technologists under the Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN (WISE-KIRAN) scheme during the past 10 years, said the Minister of State for Science and Technology & Earth Science in response to a question asked by MP Satnam Singh Sandhu in the Rajya Sabha. The reply also referred to the steps being taken by the union government to encourage women’s participation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.