January 1st 2025.
The Indian government has given its nod to continue the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme till 2025-26, announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday. This decision aims to provide risk coverage for crops against natural calamities for farmers across the country in the coming years. According to an official statement released after the Cabinet meeting, the overall outlay for these schemes will be Rs 69,515.71 crore from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
To further improve the implementation of these schemes, the Cabinet has also approved the creation of a Fund for Innovation and Technology with a corpus of Rs 824.77 crore. This fund will be utilized for large-scale technology infusion, which will increase transparency and efficiency in claim calculation and settlement. It will also support technological initiatives such as YES-TECH and WINDS, as well as research and development studies.
The YES-TECH initiative uses remote sensing technology for yield estimation with a minimum weightage of 30 per cent given to technology-based estimates. Currently, nine major states including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka are implementing this scheme, with others in the process of joining.
Under the WINDS initiative, Automatic Weather Stations will be set up at the block level and Automatic Rain Gauges at the panchayat level. This will increase the network density by five times and provide hyper-local weather data. The central and state governments will only have to pay for data rental costs. While nine major states are already implementing this, others have shown interest and are in the process of joining.
In order to give more benefits to state governments, the implementation of WINDS has been postponed from 2023-24 to 2024-25. This decision was made considering the necessary background preparations and planning required before tendering. The central government will share 90 per cent of the premium subsidy with the northeastern states, and efforts will be made to cover all farmers in these states on a priority basis.
Despite the voluntary nature of these schemes and a low gross cropped area in the northeastern states, the government has given flexibility to avoid fund surrender and reallocate funds to other development projects and schemes, as per their requirements. This decision will ensure that the benefits of these schemes reach as many farmers as possible, thus fulfilling the government's commitment to supporting the agricultural sector.
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