Haryana plans Insurance Corporation for farmers

With farmers facing heavy losses on account of crop damaged by freak weather conditions, the Haryana government today announced bringing all growers under insurance scheme by setting up an Insurance Corporation.
This is aimed at ensuring proper compensation for their crop loss due to adverse weather conditions.
"We have plans to set up Insurance Corporation on Public Private Partnership mode so as to bring all farmers under this fold whereby affected growers could get compensation for their crop loss," Haryana Agriculture Minister O P Dhankar said here today while addressing 'Meet-the-Press' programme.
Dhankar said that the state government was in the process of identifying suitable insurance companies for entering into a tie-up to undertake crop insurance activity in the state.

"We are studying various crop insurance polices in order to provide maximum relief to farmers for the loss suffered due to inclement weather conditions," he said.
To a query, Dhankar said that farmers, who had taken insurance cover against existing weather based crop insurance schemes operated by other companies were not getting adequate compensation for crop loss.

He further said that farmers were also not "much impressed" with insurance coverage provided by such companies.
Notably, in a recent meeting of State Level Bankers' Committee here, an official of Agriculture Insurance Company Of India Ltd had pointed out that Haryana government did not issue notification for the implementation of crop insurance schemes for Kharif and Rabi seasons 2014-15.

Agriculture Insurance Company Of India Ltd implements three crop insurance schemes-- National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, Modified National Agriculture Insurance Scheme and Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme.
In these schemes, farmers are charged in the range of 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent of scale financing from farmers as premium while 5 per cent each is contributed by state and Centre.
The Haryana government had projected loss in wheat crop over 18 lakh hectares out of total sown area of 25 lakh hectares because of rain and hailstorm and had sought compensation of Rs 1,136 crore from Centre.
With rains again adding to the miseries of farmers, Haryana government has extended special girdawari by 5 days from April 15 in order to assess crop loss due to untimely rains and hailstorm.

"We will give compensation to affected growers within one month," he asserted adding that the minimum compensation would not be less than Rs 500.
Among other relief measures, Dhankar said that the crop loan for affected farmers would be at zero per cent rate of interest for six months.