Crop insurer seeks ISRO aid to settle claims

The mechanism for ascertaining damage to crops because of natural or manmade factors is primitive and flawed and this often led to filing of inaccurate information.

To remedy this problem, the Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited (AICIL) has approached Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Ahmedabad, to explore the possibility of using remote sensing technology to ascertain crop damage and pay the right amount of insurance for crop damage.

AICIL chairman cum managing director Suparas Bhandari and his team held the first round of discussions on Tuesday with ISRO scientists here.

"AICIL is seriously exploring the possibilities of using remote sensing techniques of ISRO to ascertain crop damage, so that disbursements can be made more accurately," Bhandari told Business Standard.

Claims on crop damage were often exaggerated and there was an urgent need to evolve a more efficient method of settling crop damage claims, he said.

Under the system currently in use, data regarding crop damage was collected at the gram panchayat level and then sent to the taluka level, which then forwarded it to the district administration.

Different state governments then submitted crop damage data from district headquarters to AICIL.

This was both time consuming and also exposed to abuse as exaggerated crop damage data could not be cross-checked except at great expense owing to absence of an efficient verification mechanism.

AICIL had only around 200 staff all over the country, and its team could not verify claims from all over the country, sources pointed out.