PRADHAN MANTRI FASAL BIMA YOJANA

Objective: To provide crop insurance to farmers Achievement: Farmers are unable to get insured money for crop loss

The scheme aims to bring 50 million farmers under insurance cover at a total annual budgetary allocation of 5,500 crore. The government also launched the restructured weather-based crop insurance scheme to help farmers tide over crop loss. These schemes, which plan to cover 50 per cent of the country’s cropped area by 2019, already cover 30 per cent of the cropped area and have been implemented in 21 states.

But farmers are finding it difficult to get the insured amount for crop loss. Take for instance the weather-based crop insurance scheme. Out of the rougly 82,354 lakh claims made in 2016-17, only 20,936 lakh was paid, according to the credit division of the agricultural ministry. It is not surprising why this is happening. Going against popular opinion, the govermnet co-opted private insurance companies, even though public service banks were ready to join the scheme. G V Ramanjaneyulu, executive director, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, says that when claims are high, private insurance companies refuse to pay farmers. “In some cases, state governments too did not release their share of the insured amount,” he says. “Moreover, insurance companies do not have a wide rural distribution network, so the settlement mechanism does not happen,” says Sathya Raghu, cofounder of Kheti, which works with farmers’ groups in Telangana.