Marathwada, which is notorious for farmer suicides had pinned hopes on the new crop insurance scheme – Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana (PMFBY) to save its farmers. But it has been a complete disappointment. Farmers of the region are in despair for they have not yet received the settlement for the crops lost in 2017, despite having paid the premium.

The Kharif season in 2017 in Parbhani district of Marathwada was covered by Reliance General. Farmers had lost their crop because of monsoon failure in that season.

A farmer activist, Maulik Kadam, District President of Shetkari Sanghatana told the paper that a total of 2,79,000 farmers in the Parbhani district paid ₹19.27 crore as premium for soybean in the kharif 2017 to Reliance General. The writer was not able to verify this sum independently. Mails to the company were unanswered at the time the article was published.

It was only after farmers of the district joined hands and took the problem to the District Agriculture Department and the Collector in May 2018 and went on a hunger strike that Reliance General settled the claims of soybean farmers in Sonpeth, Palam, Sailu and Purna taluks. However, till today, farmers from two large taluks - Parbhani and Jinthur, have not received even partial settlement of their dues.

Premium receipts in possession of BusinessLine show that 150-plus soybean farmers from Bori and nearby villages including Chandaj and Karvali that come under Parbhani district, have paid the premium for 2017 Kharif crop. Farmers at Parbhani are demanding an immediate settlement. With the Rain God letting them down in 2018 again, their only hope for any cash-flow now is the money from crop insurance.

Slack behaviour

While government guidelines require that the insurance companies deploy requisite infrastructure and resources for implementation of PMFBY to reach farmers at their doorstep, Reliance General does not appear to have done this. Suryakanth Sakaram Pathange, a farmer from Parbhani expressed his anger with - “ Hum kahan jayen aur kisse poochaen (where do we go and whom do we ask)? The insurance company could not be reached for our queries. Their toll-free number never worked…”

Reliance General claims that it had an office in the area in 2017, but this could not be verified.

None of the over 150 farmers who the writer met at Parbhani had seen the office of Reliance General or its representative at the village in the last two years.

This raises questions on whether the reach of the insurer in the specific region is taken into account while empanelling an insurance player.

Further, in Kharif 2017, there were lot of irregularities in crop cutting experiments (CCE), according to a report of the Committee of the District Agricultural Department.

Crop Cutting experiment is the process of harvesting the crop, threshing and winnowing it, and then weighing it to estimate the yield. This, then becomes the basis for claim settlement under the policy.

Farmers claim that at Parbhani, the mandatory number of CCEs were not done in Kharif 2017. The copy of the CCE documents for the Kharif 2017 season which BusinessLine had access to, shows the insurance company’s representative had not signed in any of these documents.

As per the government guideline, the State Revenue Department officials need to do the CCE, agreed. But the insurance companies are required to co-witness it. If Reliance General was not intimated about the CCE, it has to explain why it chose to remain silent.

It’s time that Reliance speaks up and pays up.

“We lost our crops. The government knows it. The satellite data has it. Pay us what we are due…,” said a smallholder farmer to the writer.

There are many gaps in the framework of PMFBY which is being exploited by insurance companies. The government needs to plug these for ensuring effective implementation of the scheme. The role of the Revenue Department in CCEs is important and there should be a mechanism to check that it carries out its role satisfactorily.

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