Govt says no to insurance scheme for wheat crop

Chandigarh, January 13
The Punjab government has finally decided that it would not implement the Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) during this rabi season for the wheat crop. Claiming that insurance cover is not required for wheat crop in Punjab as it is safe, mainly because of good irrigation network. The Agriculture Department has decided against launching the scheme of the Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC) of India.

However, the state government now says that it has no objection to the AIC offering its insurance product for wheat crop on its own in Punjab. Maintaining that the scheme would not be of much benefit to farmers, officials in the Agriculture Department said that they did not want to force farmers to pay premium for an insurance cover that was not required in the state.

They said that had the same scheme been offered for vegetable crops or fruits, they would have supported it.

It may be noted that the scheme was propounded by the Union Government last year and the Punjab government had agreed to implement it. A budgetary provision of Rs 5 crore was also made for the implementation of the scheme before the last kharif marketing season. But a pilot conducted for implementation of this scheme in last last kharif season at a few places, including Kalanaur in Gurdaspur, did not get the desired results.

This forced the state government to have a re-think on the viability of this scheme for farmers in Punjab. Meanwhile, AIC officials here said that the scheme should be implemented in at least five districts- Ferozepur, Faridkot, Sangrur, Muktsar and Mansa.

They maintain that the modified NAIS has been formulated, incorporating the necessary changes and modifications in the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS) in consultation with states, to make it more comprehensive and farmer friendly. These changes include reducing the notified area for insurance scheme to the panchayat-level for major crops like wheat.

Also, the yield of insured crop would be furnished by the state government by conducting the required number of crop cutting experiments at the village-level. Incidence of hail damage on insured crop would be treated as localised calamity and accordingly individual assessment at the farm-level would be done for claim settlement.