When issues concerning farmers are to hold the centre stage in the polls scheduled for 2019 across the country, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) has come off as a providential value for the BJP to gain farmers’ confidence in Odisha. Because, Odisha is the second State after Jharkhand in the country that has recorded a hefty rise in farmers’ enrolment under the PMFBY in 2017-18.
According to latest data available, Odisha has witnessed an increase of around 71,000 more farmers availing the PMFBY in 2017-18. The total farmers enrolled under PMFBY in Odisha in 2017-18 have touched 18.91lakh. Only Jharkhand with addition of a whopping nearly 3lakh farmers under PMFBY topped the country. Why this would come as sigh of relief for the BJP here is coincidently in the States where the BJP has lost elections recently to the Congress, enrolment under PMFBY has posted a sharp fall in 2017-18. States like MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, UP and Maharashtra have posted a big fall in PMFBY enrolment in 2017-18.
The data further revealed the very crux of PMFBY bonanza in Odisha when it recorded an eye-popping 301 per cent jump in claims made by farmers in 2017-18 under PMFBY. From an estimated claim of around Rs 431 crore by 18.2 lakh farmers in 2016-17, the claims filed by over 18.91 lakh farmers in 2017-18 has touched around Rs 1,729 crore.
Interestingly, the claims paid so far has totalled to a whopping Rs 1,720 crore, if data is to be believed. Even, PM Narendra Modi has mentioned the success of PMFBY in Odisha in a big way during his address at Swabhiman Samabesh on Monday. Significantly, Odisha figured as the third State in the country with regard to payment of highest compensation amount under PMFBY in country.
However, the twist in the PMFBY success tale is since the subsidy on premium is equally shared by the Centre and the State, in the list of the claimants to harvest farmers’ goodwill, the BJD too could lay its claim, though the scheme was conceptualised by the Modi-led NDA Government.
The political truth witnessed on earlier polls is the MGNREGA goodwill has mostly been accrued to the BJD than to the Congress, because the State has been the implementing agency.
According to noted agricultural expert Ashok Gulati, the PMFBY has in theoretically could be a game-changer scheme for the BJP Government but the delayed payments and flawed crop cutting survey at the State level across the country resulted in fall in enrolment in recent times under the scheme.
“Timely submission of yield data of crop cutting surveys and payment of premium subsidy to insurance companies could make the scheme a real game-changer. Tamil Nadu has done so by quickly distributing compensation in 2016-17, when it faced a worst drought,” observed Gulati. Incidentally, Tamil Nadu is another State which has posted a rise in farmers’ enrolment under the PMFBY in 2017-18.
Odisha still has miles to go in providing insurance shield to farmers against natural disaster when the State tops in crop damage by disasters in 2018-19, because only over 39 per cent of the operational farm holdings in the State could have been brought under insurance net in last two years. The national average coverage under the PMFBY, however, is over 41 per cent.