Cooperative Credit Institution has its glorious presence in the heart of Indian farmers for more than a century in alliance with the international Cooperative movement.  The cooperative credit institutions are indeed the soul of rural credit system in India abided in a democratic structure. In India, where 70% of its population is engaged in agriculture and allied activities, the cooperative has emerged as an organization for the farmers, by the farmers and of the farmers. Amongst rural cooperative credit institutions short term cooperative credit institutions provide short term crop loan to the farmers, while the long term cooperative credit institutions meet the long term cooperative credit need to carry forward agriculture and allied activities.  In brief, the LTCCS is engaged in Term Lending for Project based activities in Farm, Non Farm and other sectors including areas like farm mechanization, agriculture and non agriculture based entrepreneurship, housing etc.

The century old Cooperative Credit Sector in India started with providing Short Term Loan to the farmers. However, the Loans provided by the short-term credit sector were not enough to enable farmers to improve upon their land and augment their income. The long term cooperative credit sector was necessitated as cooperative societies formed to provide short term credit were not in a position to extend loans to farmers so that they may liquidate their past debts, redeem their land and other assets from unscrupulous Money Lenders or create income generating assets for a sustainable livelihood through investment credit. In this scenario, it was felt that the long-term loans to the farmers for the purposes would have to be made by a separate set of credit institutions.

This realization led to formation of Long Term Cooperative Credit Sector (LTCCS).  The first long term cooperative credit institution in the name of ‘Land Mortgage Bank’ was established in Punjab in 1920.  In Bengal 5 Land Mortgage Banks were established in 1934-35, of which Birbhum Land Mortgage Bank was one of them and the other four Banks were situated in the erstwhile east Pakistan.  At the time of independence i.e. on 15^th August 1947 there were two Land Mortgage Banks in West Bengal, viz. Birbhum Land Mortgage Bank and Burdwan Land Mortgage Bank. With these two Long Term Cooperative Credit Institutions, West Bengal started its journey in the long-term cooperative credit sector.

The West Bengal State Cooperative Agriculture & Rural Development Bank Ltd. (The WBSCARD Bank Ltd.), previously known as The Land Mortgage Bank started its journey in 1958 to address the credit need of the Long Term Credit Cooperative Sector (LTCCS). It is the Apex Long Term Cooperative Credit Institution of the state and was registered on 07-01-1958 having the Registration Number 1 as per West Bengal Cooperative Society Acts and Rules.

Since the very inception, The WBSCARD Bank Ltd. has been playing a prominent and significant role in the development of rural economy with its 4 Branch offices, 9 Sub Branches and 24 Member Primary Cooperative Agricultural & Rural Development Banks in all over West Bengal.

The Bank has also initiated to create new avenues for augmenting scope of lending process as well as to make economic development in rural areas of West Bengal by way of constituting Farmers’ Clubs (FC), Self Help Groups (SHG), Joint Liability Group (JLG), Empowering Women and weaker section.

In the LTCCS, long term and medium term loans are disbursed through two tier structure under Farm, Non-Farm and Housing Sector. The WBSCARD Bank Ltd. as the apex organisation undertakes both on lending and direct lending activities. The on-lending activities are being done through 24 PCARDBs along with its 3 branches in the State.

Two Branches of WBSCARDB are situated in the district of Darjeeling with Four sub-branches and Purulia with five sub-branches respectively to extend business volume of the WBSCARDB at bottom. There are also two Training Institutes, one is ICMARD at Ultadnaga in Kolkata and another is at Siliguri namely RICMARD.