The State government’s plan to implement a crop insuranc scheme, following the inordinate delay in claim settlement and complicated rules in the Prime Minister’s Fasal Bima Yojana, could be delayed.
An official team that visited Bihar to study the insurance scheme there has reported that the Bihar model would not be effective in Karnataka.
The State Agriculture Department had been mulling the introduction of the crop insurance scheme over the last one year, and had asked department officials to check if the Bihar model could be implemented in Karnataka. “After studying, officials had concluded that the scheme would not be effective in Karnataka,” a top source in the Agriculture Department told The Hindu . The Bihar model, the source said, works like a general scheme on the lines of input subsidy. “Insurance model is not crop or area specific. It’s a general amount given to the farmer,” the source said.
Karnataka started looking beyond the Fasal Bima Yojana, which is currently being implemented, after it found that the parameters for qualifying for claim was rigid and complicated. Over the last few years, claim settlement had been delayed, forcing the State government to consider its own insurance scheme for farmers. In Karnataka, about 25 crops are covered under crop insurance.
Acknowledging that the department team had not submitted a favourable report on the Bihar model, Agriculture Minister N.H. Shivashankar Reddy maintained that the government had not dropped the idea of the insurance scheme. “We are not yet ready to write off the possibility of having our own insurance scheme. We will discuss on how to improvise the scheme,” he said.
Meanwhile, the State government finalised the tender process to identify insurance companies in all 10 areas across the State for the 2019-20 fiscal. About 7,500 farmers have registered for the kharif season.
According to the Agriculture Department, about ₹6.48 crore claim settlement is pending for 2017-18, during which ₹1,042 crore claim had been settled. Similarly, for 2018-19, claim settlement had already begun in Shivamogga, Kolar, and Mysuru districts and would commence in other districts shortly. A claim of ₹641 crore had been accepted for 2018-19.
