Cropped Area Insurance 1% in State, 27.2% at national level

GUWAHATI: Be it lack of awareness among the State farmers or the schemes not being farmer-friendly, crop insurance is just not happening in Assam. It goes counter to the fact that perennial floods damaging standing crops every year in the State.

Two agriculture insurance schemes - Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojona (PMFBY) and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) - are available for the farmers to insure their crops. Against 27.2 per cent of the total cropped area being insured at the national level, only 1 per cent of the total cropped area is being insured in the State. What is even more surprising is that the total area of crop insurance in the State has got stuck at 1 per cent for the past four years.

A reality check shows - the Gross Cropped Area (GCA) in the State is 40,83,000 hectares. Of that only around 42,000 hectares cropped area is insured. This is just 1 per cent of the GCA. On the contrary, the State had to suffer 0.31 lakh hectare and 2.14 lakh hectare crop damage respectively in 2018 and 2019 because of floods.

A top-level State agriculture official said, 'Such a dismal situation in crop insurance in the State is because of lack of awareness among the farmers in the State. These being central schemes, we've little to do in them. Eight insurance companies have been looking at them. We just release the state and central premia for the schemes. Apart from lack of awareness, farmers shy away from resorting to crop insurance because of the red tape at the time of claims and objections.'

The official further said that 60,000 State farmers insured their crops in 2016-17; 56,000 farmers in 2017-18; 73,000 farmers in 2018-19 and 1.60 lakh farmers in 2019-20 till now. 'The rise in the number of farmers insuring their crops in the State this year is attributed to the streamlining and simplification of the insurance schemes. Such a rise in the number of farmers insuring crops will certainly raise the percentage of cropped area insurance,' he said.

Source: The Sentinel