Skip to main content

Government set to launch new crop insurance scheme

The government will launch the much-talked about new crop insurance scheme, which aims to keep a lower premium for farmers and faster settlement of claims, in 2016-17.

  • Under the proposed crop insurance scheme, the premium to be charged from farmers will be kept lower and focus will be on early settlement of claims.

  • New technologies, including drones, will be used to assess crop damage faster, he said.

  • Currently, farmers have to pay premium ranging from 4 to 15 per cent to insure crops.

Example: the case of Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, where the actual premium for paddy is 22 per cent of the sum insured and farmers have to pay a premium as high as 5.75 per cent.

  • New Crop Insurance Scheme through which it will bring down the rate of premium to be paid by farmers to a maximum of 2.5 per cent of the sum insured.

  • The remaining premium will be paid by the Centre and the state governments .

  • It has estimated the expenditure at Rs 8,000 crore if 50 per cent of the total crop area of 194 million hectare is insured.

  • In 2015 only 27 per cent of the crop area was insured, which cost Rs 3,150 crore to the national exchequer.

  • Under the new formula, a farmer will not have to pay more than 2.5 per cent of the sum insured as premium for kharif crops (paddy, maize, millet, etc), 2 per cent for all rabi crops except wheat, 1.5 per cent for wheat and 2 per cent for all pulses.

  • The proposal also envisages a cap of 5 per cent on premium a farmer has to pay to get horticulture crops (including fruits, vegetables and commercial crops) insured.

  • By lowering premiums substantially, the government is banking on increasing the coverage of farmers from the existing 23 per cent to 50 per cent in the next two to three years.

  • While Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Kerala and a few districts in Andhra Pradesh have notified the existing crop insurance scheme, states like Punjab and Haryana have not done it so far.

  • The new scheme will also seek to address a long-standing demand of farmers and provide farm-level assessment for localised calamities, including hailstorms, unseasonal rains, landslides and inundation.

  • The government is planning to use smartphones to capture crop cutting data to reduce the time taken to finalise yield data .

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inland Waterways in India

Here are some key points you need to know: The bill seeks to add 106 inland waterways to the existing six National Waterways on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture and comments of several state governments The bill will also look after the renovation and maintenance of the existing waterways Out of the 106 new waterways, 18 have already been identified. These include five waterways each from Karnataka and Meghalaya, three each from Maharashtra and Kerala, one each from Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan The bill also aims to help the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) to develop the feasible stretches for Shipping and Navigation. Let us look at the six existing National Waterways in India: National Waterway 1 (NW1) The National Waterway No. 1 uses a 1,620-kilometre stretch of the Ganges River. It was declared a national waterway in the year 1986 and runs from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal....

INS Kadmatt commissioned at Naval Dockyard in Visakhapatnam

INS Kadmatt commissioned at Naval Dockyard in Visakhapatnam  INS Kadmatt, the second ship of Project 28 class ,anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvettes, was commissioned at the Naval Dockyard in Visakhapatnam. INS  Kadmatt  is the second of four anti-submarine warfare corvettes built for the Indian Navy by the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers of Kolkata under Project 28. INS Kadmatt has been named after the Kadmat Island of India’s Lakshadweep Islands. The primary role of the INS  Kadmatt  is in anti submarine warfare – to protect ships in convoys and ports from enemy submarine attacks. What is anti submarine warfare? Anti-submarine warfare    is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines. Successful anti-submarine warfare depends on a mix of sensor and weapon technology, training, experience and luck. Soph...

Environment Ministry notifies revised standards for Common Effluent Treatment Plants

Environment Ministry notifies revised standards for Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) Across industrial clusters-PIB CETP • The concept of common effluent treatment plant has been accepted as a  solution for collecting, conveying, treating, and disposing of the effluents  from the industrial estates. • The effluent include industrial wastewaters and domestic sewage generated  from the estate. • This CETP concept helps small and medium scale industries to dispose of  their effluents. Otherwise it may not be economical for these industries to  treat their wastewaters or there may be space constraints. • Some of these industries may require to give preliminary treatment (for  removal of solids) so that the receiving sewers can be maintained free  flowing. • It may be required to correct pH or removal of specific pollutant before the  industry discharges in CETP. CETP • CETP is designed on the basis of: – Quality and flow rate of the wastewa...