India’s farmers steward the country’s food security, yet they live in chronic distress and policy indifference. Though their contribution is crucial, they continue to be vulnerable and voiceless.
Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar who comes from a farming family, has repeatedly expressed discontent by consistently bringing up farmers’ grievances into the public limelight, stressing that “it is the government’s foremost responsibility to take care of the farmers”.
Rural backbone in crisis
Agriculture, despite accounting for only 18.2 per cent of India’s GDP, remains the primary source of livelihood for nearly 42.3 per cent of the population. However, over the last decade, India has witnessed a significant decadal drop in agricultural employment, underlining the sector’s declining viability. Agrarian distress is now endemic, driven by crop failures, falling prices, and a broken promise of security through insurance.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2015 data, 80 per cent of suicides among farmers were due to debt and bankruptcy. The crisis has also exhibited a steady trend upward, with more than 1,12,000 people who work in the agricultural sector having died by suicide over the last ten years, according to NCRB data released in December 2023. The figures indicate that no fewer than one farmer died by suicide every hour in India. A 2018 survey conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO) found that over 50 per cent of farm households in India had debt.
PMFBY mired in complexity and disconnection
Launched in 2016, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) assured crop insurance and restored farmers’ confidence. On paper, it addressed many of the earlier shortcomings. But a closer look reveals that this ambitious insurance service ends up replicating several flaws of earlier schemes. It not only falls short of meeting the expectations of the farming community but, alienates the very people it was meant to safeguard.
A fundamental flaw resides in the impenetrable, convoluted, and overly technical process of settling claims. The use of satellite imaging and averaging data across vast units has created a mechanism highly disconnected from ground realities. Importantly, satellite inspections are limited in scope: they can only identify the presence or absence of crops. They cannot, and do not, determine the health or yield capacity of the crop, nor can they tell one type of crop from another. This technological weakness, when used as the basis for compensation, results in miscalculations that cost real livelihoods. A farmer who suffers heavy losses due to pest damage or loss of nutrients might be deprived of compensation just because their crops appear green from above.
Even more appalling is the inherent inequity of the existing model. While farmers pay premiums on an individual level, compensation is calculated by generalised averaging within village clusters or vaguely defined large patches aggregating both large and small landholdings without any equity-based method in delineating the units. This results in discriminatory denials of claims—most importantly, for those experiencing localised or complete loss of crops. These ongoing application of area-based measurement models exacerbates these issues. Localised weather conditions like a flash flood in a corner of a village can destroy a small farmer’s crop, while that of his neighbour remains intact. However, both are measured using the same parameter. It is deeply unfair that individual agony and suffering are erased by collective statistics.
The programme also does not cover those most at risk: tenant farmers, sharecroppers, female cultivators, and non-loanee farmers. These are systematically and indirectly excluded by land title requirements, archaic tenancy laws, and bureaucratic obstacles such as Aadhaar-linked bank accounts. Women who increasingly become the main cultivators because of male migration are not accounted for in this system through absence of formal landholding. These omissions are not accidental; they are manifestations of a design that does not see the true face of Indian agriculture in the present day.
Even when the Centre and states subsidise 80–85 per cent of premium charges, private insurance companies consistently make profits while farmers do not gain much. Claims get delayed, disputed, or rejected, even as companies collect risk-free premiums. Meanwhile, crop-cutting experiments are done by inadequate manning, delayed rolling out, and poor-quality control, and the technological solutions like drones and AI-based analytics remain underutilised due to infrastructural gaps and lack of field-level training. Most alarmingly, a 2022 CAG report says that only 37 per cent of farmers surveyed had any real awareness of PMFBY’s benefits, premium structures, or claim processes.
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Stories of neglect
On-ground realities expose serious flaws in crop insurance delivery. Forced enrollment, delayed or denied claims, and faulty surveys have left farmers uncompensated and in debt.
In Tamil Nadu’s Mayiladuthurai district, a mere 68 villages among 277 were covered in the 2024 crop insurance settlements—and compensation was paid in just 16 of them. Similar cases were found in other districts too.
D Arogyam, a 55-year-old Tamil Nadu farmer who was not a loanee, was compelled by officials to sign up for PMFBY. Despite paying his premiums on time, he got no claims for two successive years of crop failure due to drought, pushing him into debt. S. Velu, a loanee cultivator from Sivagangai near Kiliyur, availed Rs 70,000 for his 15-acre field. Even though he was in the surveyed and insured area, he faced claim settlement problems as liabilities piled up. In Thoothukudi, farmers demonstrated against one-sided compensation. Villages that were affected by floods were not considered, while those with equal damage were compensated. Farmers accused the faulty surveys and demanded accountability.
In Haryana, as reported by Down to Earth, Ramesh Lal from Sonipat was forced to pay a premium under threat of losing his interest subsidy on a loan, even though he never consented to the insurance coverage. When his crop failed, no claim was paid due to “technical issues” with the policy documentation he was never shown.
In Rajasthan, many farmers lost their claims because the State Bank of India delayed crediting their premiums. Consequently, they went into the subsequent cropping season without anticipated reimbursement.
Monsoon and bad luck
Tamil Nadu’s farmers are particularly vulnerable to monsoon fluctuations. While other states rely on both southwest and northeast monsoons, Tamil Nadu disproportionately relies on the latter, which is even more unpredictable with climate change. A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in 2023 reported a 15 per cent reduction in northeast monsoon rainfall during the last decade despite an upsurge in extreme weather events such as cloudbursts and local floods.
For instance, coastal regions such as Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Pudukkottai and Nagapattinam have suffered both delayed and unseasonal rains during the same crop season in 2022–2023. Such uncertainty is catastrophic: the crops are wiped out either because of drought or flooding, usually during the same season. But PMFBY does not cover loss of income unless the area’s average yield falls below a cut-off, which makes it inappropriate for compensation at the individual level.
What needs to change
Farm-level valuation should use GPS apps and geotagged images, integrated with AI for real-time crop monitoring. Blockchain can secure farmer identification and ensure inclusive coverage. Open platforms and mobile feedback will ensure accountability. Drones, sensors, and training can help bridge the digital divide, with panchayats advancing local tech literacy via voice-based helplines.
One of the most important measures I firmly support is that of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). It ensures that the benefits find their way to the intended target without any middlemen, complexities, and opaque bureaucratic web. The same was reaffirmed recently by the Vice President, who highlighted the inefficacies of indirect subsidies. “There are always leakages. It does not achieve optimal results.”
Schemes such as PMFBY reveal underlying structural faults and fiscal shortfalls in India’s agricultural policies, highlighting the imperative of reform. To effectively deal with the climate and agrarian crisis, PMFBY needs to transform into a transparent, accountable, and sympathetic support system that identifies farmers not as data points but as human beings whose livelihoods are based on timely, humane settlement of claims. Agriculture is not just an economic activity—it is a lifestyle requiring governance that listens, that understands, and acts with genuine concern.
Karti P Chidambaram is a Member of Parliament for Sivaganga, and a Member of the All India Congress Committee. His X handle is @KartiPC. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)