Union Cabinet approves Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The Cabinet approved Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojna, a crop insurance scheme aimed to ensure farmers’ welfare.

The scheme will offer more insurance with less premium, and lead to rise of purchasing capacity of farmers.
The new scheme replaces the existing National Agricultural Insurance Scheme.
Government liability on premium subsidy will be shared by central and state governments on fifty-fifty basis.
The budget for Crop Insurance will be substantially increased from 2823 crore rupees in 2015-16 to 7750 crore rupees in 2018-19.
Remote Sensing, smart phones and drones will be used for quick estimation of crop losses and early settlement of claims.
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.

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.
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 .

The new Crop Insurance Scheme is in line with One Nation – One Scheme theme.

Comparing the new insurance scheme with the previous schemes:

No	Feature	NAIS [1999]	MNAIS [2010]	PM Crop Insurance Scheme[2016]
1	Premium rate	Low	High	Lower than even NAIS (Govt to contribute 5 times that of farmer)
2	One Season – One Premium	Yes	No	Yes
3	Insurance Amount cover	Full	Capped	Full
4	On Account Payment	No	Yes	Yes
5	Localised Risk coverage	No	Hail storm Land slide	Hail storm Land slide Inundation
6	Post Harvest Losses coverage	No	Coastal areas – for cyclonic rain	All India – for cyclonic + unseasonal rain
7	Prevented Sowing coverage	No	Yes	Yes
8	Use of Technology	No	Intended	Mandatory
9	Awareness	No	No	Yes (target to double coverage to 50%)

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