India - Farm data fudged to claim crop insurance [:ru]India: Farm data fudged to claim crop insurance

01.04.2019 107 views
The state government has found major irregularities in the area under crop insurance for this year’s rabi or winter crop season. While the total area under cultivation for this rabi season across the state is 33.81 lakh hectares, the area under crop insurance is much higher—nearly 45 lakh hectares. State officials said the anomaly points to large-scale fudging of agriculture-related data, which according to them is the result of systemic failure. In 2016, the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme was replaced by the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), which offers better coverage and includes losses due to drought, floods, pest attack and even post-harvest losses. The average area insured in the rabi season in the state is around 10-12 lakh hectares. However, in 2015-16, a year of severe drought, the area under rabi crops that was insured was 24.55 lakh hectares. Rabi is a far smaller season than the kharif, and only a few crops are notified under the scheme. According to the PMFBY scheme, the farmer has to pay just 2% of the premium amount irrespective of the crop he has sown. The remaining premium amount is shared equally by the state and the Centre. Officials said the average area available for cultivation in Maharashtra in the rabi season is 56.93 lakh hectares. Because of poor rainfall this time, a large part of this area has been left barren. “So a large number of these cases are bogus. They have either insured land that is not sown on, or have inflated the area under sowing, or have sown multiple crops on the same land and taken insurance for all of these separately,” an official said. The official said an investigation has been launched into the entire scheme. “Every year, in some area or the other, there are cases where area under insurance is oddly higher than the average or sometimes even more than the area under cultivation. But this time around, this is being done on a scale that has not been seen before,” the official noted. Officials said they suspect that local-level officers are running this racket in nexus with farmers. According to norms, a farmer has to get a crop certificate from the local revenue official (talathi) stating the area under cultivation and under which crop or crops, before he can get the crop insured. The premium has to be paid in any of the banks authorized by the insurance company. The certificate given by the talathi is the final one used to provide insurance, and it is in these certificates that the inflated or bogus entries have been made, officials said. It is assumed that the talathi visits every farm for inspection and then hands out these certificates. However, officials said that is often not done. Also, a talathi has over 1,000 hectares of land under him, and as he issues these certificates manually to farmers, it is impossible for him to keep track of how many certificates a farmer has taken or if the farmer is inflating the area. In 2015, state officials had found that nearly 15,000 farmers in Beed had claimed bogus or inflated insurance amounts worth Rs 58 crore. The entire amount was recalled by the state government and in some cases, police cases were also filed. Source - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

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