Spread farm insurance net as wide as needed
The new year has started on a sombre note for Odisha, where at least 10 farmers have died—half of them by suicide—in less than two weeks. Two spells of unseasonal rains brought the farming community to its knees right when it was time to harvest the kharif paddy crop. The Mohan Majhi government got on its feet, with the chief minister leading teams to visit the rain-affected pockets for a reality check.
Majhi later tagged the unseasonal rains as a calamity, which meant farmers who lost more than a third of their crops would be provided assistance according to the state’s relief code. The official estimate puts the number of affected farmers at 6.66 lakh, who will get a total of Rs 291.5 crore in input assistance.
About 2.61 lakh farmers who had registered and reported losses will also be entitled to insurance cover under the PM Fasal Bima Yojana. Yet, the spectre of hopelessness looms large. In the latest instance, a farmer in Sambalpur district who was hoping to harvest 150 packets of paddy, managed just about 50—the sale of which barely covered his input costs. This drove him to the extreme step.
The problems are multi-faceted. The poor weather advisory played its part as the government failed to clearly put out the message. Most farmers were not ready when the rains came down. The relief was announced too late and was too little to cover the losses. In most cases, loans from private money-lenders and cooperative societies weigh down distressed farmers.
Those insured under the central scheme are made to wait for weeks for ground surveys to be completed as insurers have little resources on the ground. Then there is the inadequacy of covers and complex procedures that result in many exclusions. At the end, a large number of farmers, including a huge population of sharecroppers, are left out of the security network.
They remain at the mercy of nature as well as the usurious system that exploits them. That’s not all. Most of the protection is meant only for farmers of notified crops, leaving the rest in the lurch. The Odisha government has started creating a fresh database of farmers that could be a starting point for a more rational approach towards a comprehensive safety net.