Crop insurance best safety net for drought-hit farmers: PM
In Mann ki Baat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks people's help in extending coverage to 50% of farmers under the schemein one or two years
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has endorsed the government’s just-launched crop insurance scheme with a massive show of support, saying it’s the best market-based safety net that can be provided to India’s beleaguered farmers.
In his first Mann ki Baat radio address of the year on Sunday, Modi sought people’s help in extending coverage to at least 50% of farmers under the scheme in one or two years.
Hammered by two severe back-to-back droughts and the collapse of global agriculture commodity prices, farmers and farming are reeling under rural distress. Not only has it imposed hardships on farmers, leading to farm suicides, it has also squeezed rural demand impacting sales of consumer durables.
Modi said, “The biggest problem for farmers is natural calamities, where they lose everything. Their whole year goes waste. The only solution to that problem we can think of right now is the crop insurance scheme. This scheme wasn’t made to gather applause or to get praise for the prime minister. Crop insurance has been discussed for so long but not more than 20-25% farmers are benefiting from it. Can we take a pledge to connect 50% of farmers to this scheme over the next one or two years? I need your help for this."
He said the scheme is exhaustive, where the process has been simplified with technology inputs and help can be provided even 15 days after harvest. He also said the rate of insurance has been brought so low—2% for kharif crops and 1.5% for rabi crops—that “no one would have thought about it".
“You may not be a farmer but you are listening to my Mann ki Baat. Will you spread my message to the farmers? This is why I want you to publicize this," he said, adding that now the radio talk show can be heard even on a mobile phone if one gives a missed call on 8190881908.
According to experts, the government should promote crop insurance schemes but, at the same time, it needs to focus on other factors, including subsidies, commodity prices, new varieties of seeds and labour.
“I think the government should promote the crop insurance scheme and make it more accessible to farmers, but it should also look at other systemic factors which make farming vulnerable. Insurance takes care of unnatural events which are beyond our control, whereas things such as commodity prices, subsidies, varieties of seeds and labour are some of the few things which can be controlled by policymaking," said Himanshu, associate professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
“Somewhere, the government has to be careful about what it is teaching. Crop insurance in a way puts the onus on farmers. The market decides what premium a farmer would get and in a way the government is out of picture. An overall approach needs to be taken to address other concerns of farmers much like the American and European governments do," he added.
In his radio address, Modi also talked about Start-up India, saying start-ups can harness youth energy, and create citizen initiatives for linking cleanliness with beautification. He also talked about how some citizen groups were undertaking beautification work at railway stations.
The prime minister also talked about the International Fleet Review next week in Visakhapatnam, South Asian Games in Guwahati in February, the coming board exams of school students and how senior students should inspire them with success stories, and the promotion of the use of khadi.
The Prime Minister commended the Haryana and Gujarat governments’ initiative to invite the most educated girls in a village for flag-hoisting and highlighted the need to pay tributes to Mahatma Gandhi on his death anniversary, 30 January, by keeping a two-minute silence every year on that day.
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