The Opposition on Friday attacked the Narendra Modi government for alleged failures in the agriculture sector, singling out the crop insurance scheme — the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana (PMFBY) — as one that had only created windfall gains for the insurer, and was of little help to the farmer.

Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath said on Friday that the country was witnessing a record number of farmer suicides. “Thirty-five farmers are committing suicide every day. No other country has such a shameful record,” he said.

He said while huge amounts are written off from the debts of big businesses, the farmer continues to be under a debt trap. “India’s agriculture is in a debt trap because the farmers are taking a loan to service a previous loan. He is not taking a loan to have incremental agriculture,” he said.

Attacking the crop insurance scheme, Nath asked the Centre to reveal how many farmers had taken advantage of it. “The rules, the procedure and processes are so complicated that selected insurance companies have been the biggest beneficiaries,” Nath said.

Breaking it down “If we look at the total premium paid by the farmers across the country to insurance companies, it was ₹17,185 crore for Kharif 2016. A total of 3.9 crore farmers got relief of ₹6,808 crore. So the net profit to the insurance companies is ₹10,373 crores!,” the former minister said.

CPI(M) Politburo member and leader of All India Kisan Sabha Hannan Mollah also picked holes in the scheme. “The premium income amount collected by insurance companies for 2016-17 is ₹21,500 crore. However only ₹714.14 crore, or 3.31 per cent of the premium income collected, had been disbursed till 7 April, 2017 against claims of ₹4,270.55 crore in Kharif 2016. The corporate houses have siphoned off the remaining 97 per cent of the premium income amount of ₹21,500 crore,” he said.

The premium paid to insurance companies in the year 2016-17 was 400 per cent more, compared to the previous year’s figure, he claimed.

Mollah urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to explain to the farmers his statement in the Budget speech that the arrear claims had been settled.

‘Where are the jobs?’ Nath said employment generation was one of the Modi government’s biggest challenges.

“Employment has been the lowest in the last seven years. Modi had, during his election campaign, promised 2 crore jobs a year. What is the outcome? We see that only 1.35 lakh jobs were created in the year 2015 and by 2028, India needs to create 34 crore jobs,” he said.

comment COMMENT NOW