Just when state governments were chalking out plans for giving some aid to farmers affected by unseasonal rains, Gosavi Pawar quietly slipped into his field and drank a bottle of pesticide. By the time government and experts could arrive at any conclusion, the deadly poison had snuffed the life out of 47-year old Pawar, a debt-ridden farmer from Kolezhari village of Maharashtra.
Every year thousands of farmers commit suicide in India due to vagaries of weather. 2014 was declared as a drought year, while early this year, when farmers were hopeful of harvesting a bumper crop, unseasonal rain created havoc, causing immense damage to the standing crops, leaving farmers in despair again.
Around 60 per cent of Indian population is engaged in agriculture and the sector contributes 17 per cent to country’s gross domestic product. With the fact that India’s farms are mainly rain-fed, Monsoon in India is considered to be the lifeline for millions of farmers across the country.
What happens when Monsoon, the so-called ‘lifeline’ fails?
The irony is such that Monsoon failure or weak monsoon is quite re-occurring in India, with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) stating that around 68 per cent of India is prone to drought and a third of this area is chronically drought prone.
According to an estimate, India has faced 42 droughts between 1801 and 2002. The nature’s apathy has taken lives of millions of farmers. The suicide figures have been quite disturbing and have been a cause of worry since 1997.
Crop Insurance : Relief in Disguise for Indian Farmer
In a bid to bring down these numbers, government came up with crop insurance schemes in 1999 to provide protection to farmers. For all those who do not know what crop insurance is, it is a policy sold to farmers to hedge themselves against the uncertain weather and loss of their crops due to natural disasters, such as hail, drought, and floods, or loss of revenue due to decline in the prices of agricultural commodities.
So did crop insurance help in assuring farmers about averting their risk against nature's wrath like drought or recent untimely rain?
The answer is a blunt ‘no’. On the contrary, a good portion of farmers, even after a decade, does not even know about the existence of any such scheme. While those who are aware of it, say that it is quite a complicated and tedious task, so they rather prefer to stay away from it.
Reason behind the failure of crop insurance
The biggest reason behind the failure of the crop insurance scheme is the lack of awareness. Farmers complain that they hardly know about the benefits of the scheme or how to get one for their crops. “There is no transparency in the system. Everybody says that it is beneficial for the crops but there is no one to guide us or tell us how we get this. Everything is just on papers,” says Prem Singh, a farmer.
It is also noticed that insurance companies are also reluctant to do so because of the simple reason that it involves lots of work and is quite tedious process, moreover, it also increases their operational costs. Hence, they only entertain the farmers who either opt for insurance by themselves or the ones who opt for loans that includes mandatory crop insurance.
Secondly, applying for crop insurance is a complex process in itself. It requires heavy documentation, which is a tough task for the farmers in India, as most of them are illiterate. For example, if land is in the name of a person who is bed-ridden, his son will have to get land transferred in his name to opt for insurance. Alternatively his ailing father will have to fulfill other formalities of opening a bank account and other formalities, which is highly unlikely.
What crop insurance promises and what it actually offers
Number of schemes have been introduced for crop insurance such as Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS), National Agricultural Insurance Scheme and the latest one is the Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS).
WBCIS is done against the likelihood of financial loss on account of anticipated crop loss resulting from incidence of adverse weather conditions like rainfall, temperature, frost, humidity, floods, drought etc.
However, all these schemes have one common drawback; the insurance is done on an area basis wherein loss will be calculated on the average of village yield. For example, if heavy rain and hailstorm damage crop across 5 acres of land in village, it is highly unlikely that farmer will get adequate compensation for the loss incurred. The insurance company pays compensation for the average loss of the village instead of an individual farmer's loss.
We are well-aware of the fact that weather calamities are not confined to some specific places only and there are times when crop in one portion of land gets damaged, while the rest remains unaffected. This miscalculation leaves the grieved farmer in misery.
This is the biggest shortcoming of the present schemes. A farmer feels cheated when despite taking crop insurance, he does not get anything or just a negligible amount.
Moreover, the compensation is also released after a very long gap, which further discourages farmers from opting for crop insurance. Several cases have been reported from Bihar, where compensation was granted after almost two years.
If the government wants to be a farmer's friend in his need of crisis then there is an urgent need for the government to make it's crop insurance scheme more farmer-centric with its prime focus on measuring the individual farm household losses and making crop insurance mandatory.