Crop Insurance: An Economic Review of its Performance in India

Author: Deepali Chadha* and S.K. Srivastava

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Abstract

India is an agrarian economy with 70 per cent of the total farmers belonging to small and marginal farmers’ category (Census, 2011). Agriculture's reliance on the monsoon makes it a dangerous business, and it is the underlying cause of the country's agricultural disaster and farmer suicides. In 2019, over 42.4 thousand farmers and daily wagers committed suicide, an increase of nearly 6 per cent over the previous year (NCRB, 2019). Different alternatives have been developed, with one such mechanism being the implementation of a comprehensive crop insurance system, which cushions the shock of crop loss by assuring protection to farmers against natural hazards which are beyond their control. Although crop insurance has been in the country since 1972, yet it has been beset with several problems such as lack of transparency, high premium, delay in conducting crop cutting experiments and non-payment/delayed payment of claims to farmers. Thus, an attempt has been made in the present study

Keywords

Crop insurance, NAIS, PMFBY, WBCIS, CAGR, Instability index etc.

Conclusion

The world has changed immensely over the years and there is an urgent need to bring that change in agriculture sector as well. Crop insurance schemes have been in existence in India, since a long time, but have failed to cover most of the agriculture sector (Rajeev and Nagendran, 2019). The above study demonstrated the progress of the previously operative schemes in India. Results revealed that positive growth rates of 4.40 per cent and 4.14 per cent have been attained in the number of farmers covered under NAIS and WBCIS respectively, over the study period. However, it has been reported that 86.86–94.25 per cent of small and marginal farmers were not covered during the kharif seasons, while 94.38–97.28 per cent were not covered during the rabi seasons from 2011 to 2016 (Rao, 2019). Further, indemnity level is quite less, which need to be increased so that more number of farmers opt for the same (Kumbalep and Devaraju, 2018). Therefore, the present study stresses the need to ident

References

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How to cite this article

Deepali Chadha and S.K. Srivastava (2022). Crop Insurance: An Economic Review of its Performance in India. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(1): 434-439.