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Farm insurance scheme slow to take roots in south
Joseph Vackayil
Chennai: The National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) introduced since Kharif 2000, for select crops in select blocks, appears to be very slow in taking roots in the southern states. It still remains to be a scheme for farmers who avail themselves of the agricultural loan. Only very few non-loanee farmers in these states have chosen NAIS. The Karnataka farmers are ahead of others in the region, both in availing of agricultural loan and of NAIS cover.Field workers in Tamil Nadu point out several drawbacks in the present scheme for its failure to fascinate the farmers. They include:- The loanee farmers have a longer time-frame, 4-5 months, to insure their crop. The non-loanee farmers have only about a month. The insurance company wants the farmer to insure, in the early stages of the crop, but the farmer would like to wait to see the nature of the crop before opting fo any cover.Seasonality of the crop is fixed for all districts. Farmers want region-wise seasonality. The delta region, southern and northern districts etc, as in Tamil Nadu.The insured farmers are not eligible for any calamity relief offered by the state government. But under NAIS it is not necessary that all insured farmers should get compensation, as it is an area-bound scheme. The suggestion is that, except the farmers who get claims all others should be eligible for state reliefs, which is field inspection-based.Farmers want the scheme for sugarcane to be farm-based and not area-based.There is no insurance scheme for banana, which is very vulnerable to pests and natural calamities. Large number of farmers want NAIS cover for bananas.Similarly, there is vast scope for coverage of horticultural crops. The state government, is yet to conduct additional crop cutting experiments for them. Only limited areas are notified. It is suggested that alternative methodology to assess losses, might be thought of to increase the coverage of these crops.The higher rate of acturial premium quoted by the General Insurance Corporation (GIC) is a major stumbling block.The localised insurance scheme against hailstorm, landslide, cyclone and flood is available only in select blocks as in Uthiramerur in Kancheepuram and Ariyakkud in Pondicherry. Farmers want it to be made a state-wide covering at least one block in every district.If NAIS is made more need-based and area specific, it is said that there would be more takers. However there is a proposal to make the scheme panchayat-based (now it is block-based) from 2003. This will necessitate a small area cost estimation approach. But that would need more field work and field staff. The government plan, it is learnt, is to extend the block-level yield data to gram panchayats, with modifications based on answers to a set of 10 questions received from farmers in the target panchayats. In Tamil Nadu during Kharif 2000, 87 per cent of the business was for paddy, 12 per cent for groundnut, and one per cent for cotton. The insurance company has collected Rs 48.33 lakh during this season. The sum insured is Rs 1,933 lakh. Though the premium collected is higher than Rs 28.45 lakh collected in 1999 under the comprehensive crop insurance scheme, number of farmers and the total area covered have come down drastically from 18,692 hectares (ha) to 13,976 ha and from 41,930 ha to 29,540 ha, respectively. In Karnataka, NAIS had more takers during Kharif 2000 than in 1999. The number of loanee farmers increased to 3.13 lakh from three lakh, area to 5.86 lakh ha from 5.58 lakh ha, sum insured to Rs 331.95 crore from Rs 205.28 crore and premium to Rs 9.15 crore from Rs 3.09 crore. It is significant to note that while no non-loanee farmers sought to cover their crops in 1999, 1,053 farmers covered crop on 1,564 ha and insured a sum of Rs 85 lakh for a premium of Rs 2.57 lakh in Kharif 2000 under NAIS. Reports say that the bankers are averse to taking up the work of the crop insurance scheme, which they think should be done by the insurance company. In Kerala, 15,211 loanee farmers and 169 non-loanee farmers covered their crop in 14,713 ha and insured a sum of Rs 14.71 crore for the insurance charges of Rs 37 lakh. In all these states NAIS operations for Rabi 2000-2001 is in full swing. Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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