Big tea growers, even as they welcome the Union government's current initiative to provide insurance coverage to pre-harvest crops, have reservations about the way it is being done. They made their position clear at a meeting of all stakeholders held here recently by the Tea Board.

The Union Government, along with Tea Board and public sector Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited (AICI) is working on a weather-induced insurance scheme to protect small growers particularly from the probable loss they might suffer due to the damage to crops caused either by drought or excessive rainfall.

The big growers raised several issues at the meeting. First, they felt that the small growers should not be singled out for extending the benefit of premium subsidy under the proposed insurance scheme when the big growers were being asked to pay hefty premium. But the government's argument is that the proposed subsidy will be under the Price Stabilisation Fund Trust (PSFT) tailored for small-growers only. Besides, unlike small growers, the big growers have the capacity to pay.

Under PSFT, the government will provide subsidy on the premium to be paid by a small grower. If the grower is located in the north-east, the central subsidy will be 75 per cent of the premium amount with another 15 per cent coming from the respective State Governments and the grower coughing up a meagre 10 per cent. For SC/ST growers located in regions other than the north-east, the Central subsidy, State subsidy and grower's contribution will be 60 per cent, 15 per cent and 25 per cent respectively and for the growers (non SC/ST) in other regions, the corresponding figures will be 50 per cent, 25 per cent and 25 per cent.

AICIL has offered four variants of premium schemes depending on whether the crop damage is due to high temperature, or high temperature with high humidity, or high temperature with low humidity or excessive rainfall. However, it was felt that the classification should be narrowed down to two, namely, high temperature and excessive rainfall.

Accordingly, a committee comprising representatives of the growers, Tea Research Association and AICIL came out with the recommendation that in tea a producing area less than 3 mm rainfall in a day will be considered a dry day and above 3mm a wet day. Thus, if the total rainfall between February and May covering roughly 120 days generally known as dry period, is less than 360 mm, the period will be considered for insurance claims. Similarly, at least four hours of sunshine is needed every day during the monsoon months, i.e., between July and September. If the sunshine hours are less than that, the period will be treated as excessive rain period eligible for insurance claims.

Not everybody present at the meeting was convinced of the rationale of such an argument. This was because in tea growing areas, the variations in weather condition are wide contributing to the production of wide varieties of tea with different flavours, tastes and colours of the tea liquor and there are variations even from one garden to another depending on location and other factors. It would, therefore, be too simplistic to bring all of them under a straight-jacket formula. Finally, there could be crop losses also due to hailstorms, often localised, and attacks by pests or elephants, and these factors too should be considered for insurance coverage.

The core committee, therefore, has been asked to fine tune the scheme.

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