After making Aadhaar mandatory for a host of schemes and purposes, the State has now turned to farmers’ schemes.
From this year, the possession of Aadhaar number has become a must for a farmer to be part of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) or Prime Minister’s crop insurance scheme, which was launched in January 2016, a senior official in the Agriculture Department says.
A film, prepared by the State Horticulture and Agriculture Departments and circulated on social media, talks of a subsidy scheme encouraging small and marginal farmers to take to micro irrigation. It shows a government official referring to a photocopy of the Aadhaar card as one of the essential documents to be submitted by prospective beneficiary-farmers.
“If you have to buy subsidised fertiliser from a dealer, you need to furnish your Aadhaar number,” says A. Ravikumar, a cane farmer based in Nellikuppam of Cuddalore district in the northern belt of the State.
As is being done by commercial banks, Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) too insist on Aadhaar numbers when farmers open accounts, points out P.R. Pandian, chief of the Tamil Nadu Federation of All Farmers’ Associations.
He says, so far, he has not come across farmers reporting to him about Tiruvarur district officials insisting on Aadhaar.
The main reason behind the government’s move to focus on the PMFBY is to eliminate cases of duplication of crop insurance coverage. “All over the country, there have been instances of agriculturists getting compensation from different crop insurance agencies for the same plots of farm lands,” says the Agriculture department official, hastening to claim that there are no such instances in Tamil Nadu.
Helping farmers
Mr. Ravikumar said the insistence on Aadhaar will help needy farmers. “In the past, even in my district, there were malpractices with regard to the disbursal of relief assistance to agriculturists.” While acknowledging the need for streamlining the administration of welfare schemes in the farm sector, Mr. Pandian, however, complains that governments, Central and State, seem to be treating agriculture like a commercial sector and not like a sector that takes care of the food requirements of the people.
“There has to be a paradigm shift in the way they look at agriculture. The authorities should come out with many more assistance schemes after properly understanding our requirements.”
