Crop damage insurance scheme soon

India will launch a new farm crop insurance scheme early next year and use drones and other technologies to assess crop damage, the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare minister Radha Mohan Singh said recently, in what could be prime minister Narendra Modi's first major move to address rural hardship.

Several debt-laden farmers have committed suicide in 2015, and agriculture minister said that delays in clearing payouts for crop losses was the “biggest reason for destroying farm families. The new insurance policy will ensure compensation is paid as early as possible. In the current system payments keep getting delayed, destroying so many families.”

The government will lower the share of insurance premiums farmers pay from the current rate of up to 40 percent, which is one of the main reasons that only about a tenth of India's estimated 263 million farmers opt for crop insurance. Federal and state governments could share the remaining premium costs, Singh said, adding that drones and other technologies will be used to minimise human interference in processing claims to expedite payments.