Govt modifies Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

• Providing major relief to farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has now recognised the modalities for covering crop loss due to wild animal attacks and paddy inundation under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

• It will be rolled out from Kharif 2026.

What is the significance of this move?

• For years, farmers across India have suffered increasing crop losses due to attacks by wild animals such as elephants, wild boars, nilgai, deer, and monkeys. 

• These incidents are particularly common in regions situated near forests, wildlife corridors, and hilly terrains. 

• Until now, such losses often went uncompensated as they were not covered under crop insurance. 

• At the same time, paddy farmers in flood-prone and coastal states have been repeatedly affected by inundation during heavy rains and overflowing waterways. 

• Paddy inundation was removed from the localised calamity category in 2018 due to concerns about moral hazard and the difficulty of assessing submerged crops. 

• However, its exclusion led to a significant protection gap for farmers in districts prone to seasonal flooding.

• Taking note of these emerging risks and challenges, the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare constituted an expert committee. 

• The recommendations of the committee have now been approved by the ministry. 

• Following this decision, farmers suffering localised crop damage will now receive timely and technology-based claim settlement under PMFBY.

How will it be implemented?

• Under the revised framework, crop loss due to wild animal attack will now be recognised as the fifth add-on cover under the localised risk category. 

• States will notify the list of wild animals responsible for crop damage and identify vulnerable districts or insurance units based on historical data. 

• Farmers will be required to report losses within 72 hours using the crop insurance app by uploading geo-tagged photographs.

• The modalities have been prepared in accordance with the PMFBY operational guidelines, ensuring a scientific, transparent and operationally feasible framework for implementation nationwide, and will be rolled out from Kharif 2026.

• This coverage is expected to significantly benefit farmers in states with high human-wildlife conflict, including Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, as well as the Himalayan and northeast states such as Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh, where incidents of wild animal depredation are frequent and widespread.

• Reintroducing paddy inundation as a localised calamity cover under PMFBY will especially benefit farmers in coastal and flood-prone states, including Odisha, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, where paddy submergence is a recurring challenge. 

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)

• Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), launched on January 13, 2016, aims to provide a comprehensive risk solution to farmers at the lowest uniform premium across the country. 

• It was launched to support production in agriculture by providing an affordable crop insurance product to ensure comprehensive risk cover for crops of farmers against all non-preventable natural risks from pre-sowing to post-harvest stage. 

• The scheme also aims to cover the risk of crop yield losses of insured farmers against all non-preventable natural risks from pre-sowing to post-harvest and to provide adequate claim amount and timely settlement of claims. 

• Under PMFBY, a uniform maximum premium of only 2 per cent of the sum insured is paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5 per cent for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the maximum premium to be paid by farmers is up to 5 per cent. 

• The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low and the balance of actuarial premium is being borne by the government, to be shared equally by the state & central government  to provide full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on account of natural calamities. In Northeast states, the subsidy sharing pattern between central and state government is 90:10.

• Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers. This capping in earlier schemes has now been removed.

• In PMFBY farmers will get a claim against full sum insured without any reduction.

• The crop insurance scheme has been able to provide financial assistance to the most vulnerable farmers as around 85 per cent of the farmers enrolled with the scheme are small and marginal farmers.

• PMFBY was revamped in February 2020 with new features, such as voluntary enrolment for all farmers, wider use of technology in yield estimation, risk coverage to choose for payment of sum insured to states as per the option and prevailing risk profile.

• It has also been made convenient for the farmer to report crop loss within 72 hours of the occurrence of any event through crop insurance app, CSC Centre or the nearest agriculture officer, with claim benefit transferred electronically into the bank accounts of the eligible farmer.

• Integration of land records with the PMFBY’s National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP), Crop Insurance mobile app for easy enrolment of farmers, remittance of farmer premium through NCIP, a subsidy release module and a claim release module through NCIP are some of the key features of the scheme.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)