AP farmers set to lose crop insurance benefits

Hyderabad: The complacent attitude of the State government in dealing with farmers’ issues has come to fore once again. In a case related to crop insurance, the State government, slept over the Centre’s new GO and, went ahead with older insurance schemes thus depriving farmers of the valuable insurance to cover crops during calamities.

The Central government had brought in all the prevailing crop insurance schemes under one umbrella of National Crop Insurance Programme (NCIP) or Rashtriya Fasal Bima Karyakram (RFBK), through a GO dated November 1, 2013. Unaware of this, the state government issued GOs on November 11, extending crop insurance to the present Rabi season as per the old insurance schemes.

After learning about the Centre’s new crop insurance scheme, the State government on November 17 wrote to the Centre to allow it to implement the previous insurance schemes for the present Rabi.

Strangely, though the GO was sent to the State government on November 1, 2013, itself, nobody knew about it. According to the new GO, NCIP has been formulated by merging MNAIS (Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme), WBCIS (Weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme) and CPIS (Coconut –Palm Insurance Scheme).Unlike the MNAIS, WBCIS and CPIS where selected crops come under these schemes, all crops would come under NCIP, which would be monitored by Government of India.

An official on condition of anonymity said: “There is dereliction of duty in the entire agriculture department. Even Minister for Agriculture Kanna Laxminarayana is busy with his political engagements. Hence there is no one to address the issues of farmers, who have been reeling under various issues such as non-availability of credit, lack of remunerative prices, loss of crops due to cyclones and heavy rains.”

The government had announced an input subsidy of Rs 400 crore to the farmers for incurring crop losses due to Nilam cyclone in October 2012. But, many of the farmers in Krishna, Guntur, East and West Godavari are yet to be paid. Even as they had been waiting for the subsidy, the farmers were dealt another serious blow in the form Phailin cyclone and heavy rains in October this year.

The farmers in Khammam district raised paddy by purchasing seed varieties BPT-5204 and MPU-1001 from AP Seeds Corporation. But they lost the crops owing to inferior quality of the seeds. The paddy crop in an extent of 52,000 acres in the district was lost. The farmers are still fighting for compensation; no official is willing even to hear their problems. The farmers led by peasant bodies even met Agriculture Commissioner Madhusudan Rao to press their case, but in vain.

M Veeraiah, a farmer from Kallur, said, “We bought the seeds from AP Seeds Corporation, and not from private agencies. We are facing problems because of the indifferent attitude of the government.”