To quickly disburse the insurance claims of farmers who lost their standing crops due to bad weather, the West Bengal government will use ISRO’s data collection technology. The decision comes in the wake of the losses to the farmers in the Kharif season, PTI reported. The data collection technology will come to the aid of the government to quickly assess the damage to the crop and save the time which gets wasted in the physical assessment of the crop damage.
Officials of the state agriculture department are in talks with the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation to take in use its remote sensing satellite data-acquisition technology to assess the damage to the crops.
The decision will help us in verifying the claims of damage faster and ensure timely submission of the data to the insurance company, state Agriculture minister Ashis Banerjee told PTI. He also said that the earlier system of agriculture officials visiting the farmers and preparing the report physically was time consuming for farmers. He further said that the assessment of the damage of the crop is the most vital and fundamental part of the whole process.
The insurance company which has insured the crops of the farmers has also given its approval to the change in the process of damage assessment, the minister said. More than 46 lakh farmers are beneficiaries under the ‘Bangla Shasya Bima Scheme’ of the state. The insurance scheme was brought in the year 2019 by the Mamata government. According to the state government, more than 21 lakh hectares of the agriculture land has been included as part of the scheme.
The use of technology including satellite and drone technology has long been seen as a game changer in the crop insurance scheme for farmers. Tardy claims settlement along with corruption at the local level in providing accurate assessment of the damage are some of the main issues that have kept the farmers away from insuring their land.