Seventy-two per cent of Maharastra’s farmers insured under the Centre’s flagship crop insurance scheme come under the non-loanee segment. The figure, for kharif 2018, is the highest in the country.

A total of 86.17 lakh of the State’s farmers were insured under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) between July and September, which corresponds to the kharif season.

Non-loanee farmers are those who do not avail any agricultural loans.

CSCs credited with success

The success of the programme is being attributed to the mobilisation by Common Service Centres (CSCs).

Fifty-eight per cent of Tamil Nadu’s insured farmers were non-loanees, placing the State second in the country. Of the 2.15 lakh farmers insured from Tamil Nadu, 1.26 lakh come under the non-loanee segment. This is followed by Odisha, with the State covering 2.6 lakh, and West Bengal, which covered 2.06 lakh non-loanee farmers, according to the data compiled by the Government.

According to the data — obtained through sources as the information is yet to be made public — the CSCs mobilised 71 per cent of the total non-loanee farmers who had registered for the scheme during the kharif season. Non-loanee farmers accounted for 5 per cent of the total coverage under pre-PMFBY crop insurance programmes, the sources said.

Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 18, 2016, PMFBY is the Centre’s flagship scheme to insure crops against the vagaries of weather and other risks. Farmers pay a premium of 2 per cent (of the total premium) for the kharif season and 1.5 per cent for rabi crops.

“This follows the successful tapping of CSCs in registering non-loanee farmers under the PMFBY scheme using Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). The success in mobilisation is demonstrative of the CSCs’ potential to become the most-preferred option for the government and the empanelled insurance companies to cover non-loanee farmers under the scheme,” one of the sources said.

CSCs have been engaged to enrol non-loanee farmers since kharif 2017. The Centre had engaged CSCs as banks were not offering insurance to non-loanee farmers and insurance agents were unable to reach them during the pre-PMFBY period.

A Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) initiative, the CSC platform facilitates last-mile connectivity for delivery of multiple scheme benefits through electronic services to rural India. The VLEs of each CSC provide the necessary interface with customers, which in the case of PMFBY were farmers.

Under PMFBY, non-loanee farmers comprise an increasingly significant segment, besides farmers availing agricultural loans from banks and those mandatorily covered under the scheme.

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