Crop Insurance in Odisha – Progress, Deficit and Scope

Abstract

"Crop insurance intends an inclusive insurance protection policy in the situation of crop failure and facilitates stabilizing the earnings of the farmer. An attempt has been made to analyze the progress of crop insurance schemes in Odisha with special insights into the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). The growth and performance of crop insurance of both loanee and non-loanee farmers on different indicators have been estimated to draw a logical inference from the findings. The results revealed that among the earlier schemes, National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) performed better in terms of penetration, area coverage along with many other monetary indicators like premiums paid, claims settled, etc. The penetrations of the NAIS were also found to be significantly positive among physical and financial indicators during the kharif seasons. However, there were a few shortcomings, which led to evolving a novel scheme namely PMFBY replacing earlier schemes. The analysis of various indicators shows that PMFBY covered a higher area under paddy crops, the share of farmers benefited as a percent of farmers insured also witnessed the highest (41.26% in 2017), highest coverage of area as a percentage of gross cropped area (22.12% in 2019). Recently the scheme has been revamped and made voluntary for the cultivators, hence, to make the present scheme (PMFBY) more efficient, it is suggested to provide an active awareness campaign and establish a customer grievance cell at the local level, which would bring in more number of farmers under crop insurance."