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Impediments to the Spread of Crop Insurance in India
The Government of India aims to double the crop insurance coverage to 50% through the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana by 2018. By analysing the agricultural household data, this article comments on the feasibility of attaining this target by looking at the past performance of similar schemes. Few critical areas where efforts need to be concentrated in order to increase coverage are discussed.
The authors thank Santanu Bhadra of IIM Calcutta for valuable review comments.
On 13 January 2016, the central government announced a new crop insurance scheme for farmers in India. The scheme, named Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is going to complete one year of its launch soon. One of the major emphasis of the scheme has been to double the coverage of crop insurance among farmers to 50% by 2018.1 On 7 December 2016, the government announced that it expects the coverage to reach to over 30% farmers by the end of 2017 (Sally 2016). This article analyses the coverage of crop insurance schemes in India using household level data. It also comments on the feasibility of attaining 50% coverage by looking at the past performance of similar schemes. Further, this article points out a few critical areas where efforts need to be concentrated in order to increase coverage.
Crop Insurance
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