In News –Rejected claims of farmers crop insurance multiplied 10 times in two years under the Centre’s flagship Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).
- Insurance companies can reject some of the claims on various grounds like the late intimation of claims, denial of claims to non-insured farmers or non-insured crops, non-occurrence of the risk etc.
Data Analysis
- In 2017-18, the number of rejected claims was 92,869.
- In the next year, 2018-19, the figure more than doubled to 2.04 lakh.
- By 2019-20, it was 9.28 lakh, a 900% increase.
About Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)
- The flagship crop insurance scheme was launched on 13th January 2016, in line with the One Nation-One Scheme theme, covering over 5.5 crore farmer applications year on year.
- It replaced the existing National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and its modified version (MNAIS).
- As an end-to-end risk mitigation mechanism, it extends coverage for the entire cropping cycle from pre-sowing to post-harvest.
Provisions :
- There is no upper limit on Government subsidy.
- The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low, and the Government pays a balance premium to provide full insured amount to the farmers.
- The prescribed premium is 2% to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all rabi crops.
- In the case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium is 5%.
- Premium cost over and above the farmer share is equally subsidised by States and the Center.
- However, the Centre’s share is 90% of the premium subsidy for the Northeastern States to promote the uptake in the region.
- Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate, which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers, so it was removed and farmers will get a claim against full sum insured without any reduction.
Use of Technology in Yojna:
- Integration of land records with the PMFBY portal.
- Crop Insurance mobile app for easy enrolment of farmers.
- Farmers can report crop loss within 72 hours of the occurrence of any event through the App, Common Service Centres (CSCs) or the nearest agriculture officer.
- Usage of satellite imagery, remote-sensing technology, drones, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to assess crop losses.
Farmers to be covered
- All farmers growing notified crops in a notified area during the season who have an insurable interest in the crop are eligible.
- To address the demand of farmers, the scheme has been made voluntary for all farmers from Kharif 2020.
- Earlier to Kharif 2020, the enrollment under the scheme was compulsory for following categories of farmers:
- Farmers in the notified area who possess a Crop Loan account/KCC account (called as Loanee Farmers) to whom credit limit is sanctioned/renewed for the notified crop during the crop season.
- Such other farmers whom the Government may decide to include from time to time.
- Voluntary coverage: Voluntary coverage may be obtained by all farmers not covered above, including Crop KCC/Crop Loan Account holders whose credit limit is not renewed.
Objectives:
- To provide insurance coverage and financial support to the farmers in the event of failure of any of the notified crops as a result of natural calamities, pests and diseases.
- It covers yield losses, losses arising out of prevented sowing due to adverse weather conditions, post-harvest losses and losses due to certain localized problems like hailstorms, landslides and flooding.
- To stabilise the income of farmers to ensure their continuance in farming.
- To encourage farmers to adopt innovative and modern agricultural practices.
- To ensure the flow of credit to the agriculture sector.
Revamped PMFBY (PMFBY 2.0)
- Under the revamped PMFBY, the scheme is made voluntary for all farmers.
- The states have also been provided flexibility to rationalise the sum insured so that adequate benefit can be availed by farmers.
- The average sum insured per hectare has increased from Rs. 15,100 during the pre-PMFBY schemes to Rs. 40,700 under PMFBY.
- The allocation of work to insurance companies in a cluster has been set at three years for ensuring proper infrastructure creation, including setting up of stratified grievance redressal mechanism.
Achievements
- Claims worth Rs. 90,000 crore have so far been disbursed to farmers since the launch of the scheme.
- The Aadhaar seeding has helped in speedy claim settlement directly into the farmer accounts.
- Even during the Covid-19 lockdown period, nearly 70 lakh farmers benefitted and claims worth Rs. 8,741.30 crore were transferred.
- Some notable examples:
- Prevented sowing claims over Rs 500 crore in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during the Kharif 2019 dry spell.
- Localised calamity claims of over Rs 100 crore in Haryana during Kharif 2018 hailstorm.
- Unseasonal rainfall claims to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore in Maharashtra during the Kharif 2019.
- Mid-season adversity claims of nearly Rs. 30 crores in Rajasthan during rabi 2019-20 locust attack.
