Crop Insurance in India: A Façade or Reality

Examining the effectiveness of crop insurance schemes in India

Abstract

Farming indeed is a profession of hope blighted with untoward climatic incidents. Theunpredictable weather changes and related risks thwart the agricultural productivity gains and put farmersin a challenging situation leading to extreme hopelessness and suicides. In the independent India, thepolicy makers have unrolled various avatars of crop insurance by way of different schemes but cropinsurance seems to have remained a failed attempt. The need and usefulness of agricultural insurance inrisk mitigation are not in question here rather it is consistent fall in the acreage and the number of farmerscovered under the umbrella of these policies that are the cause of the concern. The paper provides anoverview of crop insurance schemes in the past and the present. Also it makes an attempt to analyze thestatus of India‘s flagship crop insurance scheme- Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) which is inits second phase of implementation in the country at present so as to check the viability of the existinginsurance laws in the country.