The Union Cabinet kickstarted the new year with the announcement of a total outlay of Rs 69,515.71 crore for the continuation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme till 2025-26. The official statement by the government said that the decision is expected to help in risk coverage of crops from non-preventable natural calamities for farmers across the country till 2025-26. A decision to this effect was taken by the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, just a month before Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is to table the Union Budget 2025.
In addition to the same, for large scale technology infusion in implementation of the scheme leading to increasing transparency and claim calculation and settlement, the Union Cabinet has also approved creation of Fund for Innovation and Technology (FIAT) with a corpus of Rs 824.77 crore.
The statement maintained that the fund will be utilised towards funding technological initiatives under the scheme namely, YES-TECH, WINDS, etc as well as Research and Development studies.
Yield Estimation System using Technology (YES-TECH) uses Remote Sensing Technology for yield estimation with minimum 30 per cent weightage to technology based yield estimates and nine states namely, AP, Assam, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, MP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, are implementing it. The statement further added that other states are also being on-boarded expeditiously. “With wider implementation of YES-TECH, Crop Cutting Experiments and related issues will be gradually phased out. Under YES-TECH Claim calculation and settlement has been done for 2023-24. Madhya Pradesh has adopted 100 per cent technology based yield estimation,” it added.
Weather Information and Network Data Systems (WINDS), it stated, envisages setting up Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at block level and Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs) at panchayat level. “Under WINDS, 5 times increase in current network density is envisaged to develop hyper local weather data. Under the initiative, only data rental costs are payable by Central and State Governments,” the statement said. Major states including Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, Assam, Odisha, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, are in the process of implementing WINDS, while other states have also expressed willingness to implement.
WINDS could not be implemented by states during 2023-24 due to various background preparatory and planning work required before tendering. Accordingly, the Union Cabinet has approved 2024-25 as the first year of implementation of WINDS as compared to 2023-24 earlier to give benefit to State Governments with higher central fund sharing in 90:10 ratio.
“All efforts are made and will continue to be made to saturate all farmers of North Eastern States on priority. To this extent, the centre shares 90 per cent of premium subsidy with North Eastern States. However, due to the scheme being voluntary and low gross cropped area in North Eastern States, flexibility has been given to avoid surrender of funds and for reallocation in other development projects and schemes with fund requirement,” the statement concluded.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also applauded the same through his post on X (formerly Twitter).