When drought, flood and cyclone are a Damocles sword over a farmer’s head, the shocker is nearly a whopping 70 per cent of farmland in Odisha is still out of the safety umbrella of crop insurance.
In the 2014-15 agricultural seasons, only a mere around 17 lakh hectares (ha) of farmland stood insured in Odisha vis-a-vis the gross sown area of around 51 lakh ha. This reveals the fact that the coverage of crop insurance is limited to only one-third of the gross cultivated area in the State, which shows how precariously a majority of farmers are vulnerable to natural calamities in Odisha.
Such is the ground reality when in 2015-16 farm season, Odisha emerged as a major farm distressed State witnessing around 180-200 farmer suicides, though it is a different ball game as State Government turned a blind eye labelling it as suicides for personal reasons.
According to the data available with various insurance companies, including the Agriculture Insurance Company, ICICI-lombard and others, around 21 lakh farmers from over total 45 lakh farmers in Odisha were covered by insurance support to their crops in 2015-16. This shows not even a half of the total farmers in Odisha are under insurance cover.
Moreover, the disconcerting fact is a mere around 4 lakh paddy farmers in Odisha could have their crops insured last fiscal, which shows a whopping 90 per cent of paddy farmers still are vulnerable to natural climatic swings. This low coverage bodes ill when paddy is the principal farming crop in Odisha and paddy farmers having borne the brunt of floods, droughts and pests in around 90 per cent of the years in the last decade and a half (2000-2016), since the subsidy linked insurance scheme was launched in the country.
Significantly, panicked over a spate of suicides in 2015 nationally, the State Government gave a push to crop insurance that saw a jump of 17 per cent to touch around 21.5 lakh farmers. The revealing fact about this rise is how awareness drive by the Agriculture Department brings result on the ground, when the fact is a whopping 43 per cent farmers were unaware of any insurance scheme till 2013-14 as shown in a survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation. The survey added that since only 4 per cent didn’t have resources to pay the premium, unawareness was the only spoiler. However, the same survey said farmers ranging from around 15-20 per cent are uninterested in the scheme thanks to complex terms and conditions and delay in getting claims.
Interestingly, according to the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), as the crop damage assessment exercise takes a long time, farmers are unable to get their claims even by next Kharif sowing. But the recently launched Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) provisions for immediate release of one-third of loss claimed. Moreover, the terms and conditions are liberalised as it takes individual farmer as one unit unlike Gram Panchayat earlier.