Due to the prolonged processing of crop insurance claims, there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among farmers in Odisha, which frequently results in strikes.
The loss incurred by farmers for specified crops is meant to be covered under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).
According to a state government investigation, three general insurance companies have failed to pay the farmers in Odisha 446.52 crore, or around 33%, of the anticipated claim of 1,363.2 crore under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).
The primary crop insurance programme, which debuted in 2016, is meant to compensate farmers for losses incurred when growing registered crops such ragi, maize, cotton, turmeric, ginger, and tur dal.
“There is a gap and excessive delay in claim settlement as a result of insurance companies’ objections to the performance of paddy crop cutting experiments in 541 cases involving 263 insurance units. The minutes of the state-level technical advisory committee meeting for the PMFBY said that there is a great deal of animosity among farmers as a result of the claim settlement process taking too long, which frequently results in strikes.
Farmers in various districts of Odisha had given up all hope of collecting any significant harvest from their farmlands by the end of August of last year due to a 29% rain deficit, since the window for paddy transplantation activities had practically passed. Many farmers, especially in western Odisha’s major paddy-producing districts like Sambalpur, Bargarh, and Kalahandi, believed that the PMFBY would save them as their crops withered due to a lack of rainfall in the months of July and August.
Farmers in the western Odisha district of Bargarh locked the doors of the sub-collector of Padampur, the block development officer, the tehsildar, and the sub-treasury in June of this year to protest the delay in the payment of insurance money under PMFBY for crop loss during the 2021 Kharif season. Farmers claimed that the insurance companies had rejected crop loss assertions without providing any justification.
Ramesh Mohapatra, a farmer in the Bargarh district, claimed that the claims he and numerous other farmers in the area had made had been denied due to inconsistencies in the data. “Even though the property is owned by just one individual, it is actually his son who filed the claim and paid the insurance premium. However, the firms are arbitrarily rejecting the claims without providing any justification. As a result, many farmers like myself have defaulted on loans, which has prevented us from participating in numerous state government programmes because the state excludes defaulters. Due to problems with claim settlement, many farmers also decided against purchasing new insurance this year. Who would be liable if a natural disaster occurred this year and caused damage to those
Although the businesses used to reject farmers’ claims in PMFBY in previous years, according to farmer leader Krushak Debata of Bargarh, this year’s rejection rate has been a little higher. “The corporations who don’t even have proper offices in districts are beyond supervision. Farmers would not be motivated to insure their harvest if things continued in this manner, according to Debata.
At least 5 lakh of the 15 lakh insurance claims have been rejected by insurance firms in the Bargarh district, where the most of the rejections have occurred. Only 266 crore of the district’s farmers’ claimed 421 crore have been paid thus far. In at least 9 gramme panchayats, according to farmer leaders in the district, none of the farmers whose Crop damage claims that were filed have been paid out.
Amar Patnaik, a leader of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), is a member of the Rajya Sabha and has written numerous letters to Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, claiming that it appears as though insurance companies providing crop insurance services to farmers in the state are engaging in a game of hide-and-seek with them while paying claims for crop losses they have suffered. He continued by saying that the same businesses collected the premium prior to the crop-cutting exercise without raising an eyebrow.
“These companies have been waiting until the crop-cutting experiment is complete before accepting or rejecting the insurance proposals of farmers based on the extent of crop loss, which is nothing more than cheating and fraud on the farmers, instead of accepting or rejecting the application of the farmers for insurance within a month of the collection of premium. These insurance companies are engaging in a very dishonest and cunning behaviour that exposes them to civil penalties under the new Consumer Protection Act as well as criminal penalties under multiple IPC provisions, according to Patnaik.
A number of farmers in Kalahandi district also complained to the state government in letters last month about how the insurance firm handled the claims rejections. The 173 farmers claimed in a letter to the state cooperative department that they would be compelled to commit suicide if Agriculture Insurance Company of India, the organisation that handles crop insurance for Kalahandi, did not approve their claims.
Inquiries requesting a reply on the claim made by farmers received no response from either HDFC Ergo or AIC of India.
The central level technical committee convened three days ago, according to Sanjiv Chaddha, secretary of state cooperation department, and approved farmers’ claims for 100 crore rupees. “The firms are not only to blame. They claim that when crop cutting occurs, people coerce them into signing documents. We are attempting to use this year’s physical data as well as satellite data to address the problem. The previous time, we discovered that several farmers had submitted strange applications for 100 acres of property. A few claims might be false. We have ordered the insurance providers to first confirm on-site whether anyone has paid insurance premium for more than 5 acres in order to settle this issue this year,” said Chaddha.
Prasanta Patnaik