Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has dumped Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship programme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) on the ground that it was helping insurance companies more than farmers. In its place, the Nitish Government on Tuesday launched its own Bihar Rajya Fasal Sahayata Yojana (BRFSY) to provide relief to farmers.
The scheme will be for all types of farmers — those who have their own farms, as well as those who work on others’ fields. More than 90 per cent farmers in the State have less than two hectares of land.
Interestingly, the farmers in Rajasthan have approached the Information Commission asking about the promised benefits of the PMFBY.
The BRFSY will provide financial help to farmers, shield them against nature’s vagaries, provide continuity of income in adverse situations and make agriculture a profitable
livelihood. The move has come just a day before the talks between the NDA constituents in Bihar, where the issue of seat-sharing for 2019 lok Sabha polls is expected to be high on agenda.
Unlike the PMFBY, where the farmers have also to pay a part of the premium, they will not have to pay anything from their pocket under this scheme.
The farmers will be able to avail the benefits if they incur crop damage due to natural calamities. Under the new scheme, farmers will be registered online without any charge, no fee will be taken from them and benefits will be directly transferred to their bank accounts. It will be implemented from the upcoming Kharif season.
The scheme has been conceptualised by senior IAS officer Amrit lal Meena. It will be implemented by the Cooperative Department of Bihar. The Government has allocated Rs 300 crore in the first year.
Officials said that Bihar had been wary of the PMFBY ever since it was launched in 2016. The State has been at loggerheads with the Centre over crop insurance for the last couple of years, especially when Nitish was a part of the Grand Alliance.
Clarifying his stand, Nitish said that the Centre and the State were depositing premium to the insurance companies and the farmers too were supposed to pay 2 per cent of premium but they were getting little relief. “For Kharif and Rabi seasons insurance companies were deposited Rs 800 crore (Rs 400 crore each from the Centre and the State) but the farmers got relief worth Rs 150 crore, so we decided to bring our crop assistance scheme,” the CM said.
The BJP claimed there was no clash of interest and no differences. Bihar Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar, who is from the BJP, said, “There is no difference between the Central and the State schemes. Whatever decision the PM took has been further reformed in the State scheme. This is a good initiative and there is no politics. This scheme will benefit the NDA Governments at the Centre and in Bihar.” Kumar said this was a collective decision and all the NDA allies supported it.
The number of farmers insured during both the Kharif and Rabi seasons has gone down by 14 per cent this year, the area under crop insurance scheme has come down to 24 per cent of gross cropped area (GCA) in 2017-18 from 30 per cent in 2016-17.
“Over 1.20 crore farmers benefited from the crop insurance scheme during the Kharif season last year and the Rabi season in 2016-17 as compared to 1.62 crore in 2013-14. In 2016-17, over 5.73 crore farmers insured their crop while 3.33 crore farmers in 2013-14,” the Agriculture Ministry had said in a reply to Parliament during the Budget Session.
The crop insurance scheme is the Narendra Modi Government’s flagship scheme, launched with much fanfare two years ago to protect farmers. Under the scheme, farmers have to pay just two per cent of the total premium in case of the Kharif crop, 1.5 per cent for Rabi and five per cent for horticulture. The remaining premium is equally shared by the Centre and the States.
In 2017-18, the area insured under the PMFBY was 47.5 million hectares, which translates into 24 per cent of the GCA of 198.4 million hectares.
As per the Government’s targets, the coverage in 2017-18 should have increased to 40 per cent but has actually reduced to 24 per cent. The crop insurance scheme has also witnessed a 14 per cent drop in the number of farmers insured to 47.9 million in 2017-18 from 55.3 million in 2016-17. Binod Pandey, a farmer leader, told The Pioneer that farmers had lost interest as the compensation was either denied or delayed.