New Delhi: Agriculture experts have emphasised providing a clear policy for tenants and small farmers to avail of direct government benefits as they are neglected several times. Expressing their views on the issue, the experts said in the absence of the Land Lease Act, tenants and small farmers don’t get the benefits of schemes like crop insurance, Kisan Credit Card, and others.
Agriculture expert Dharmendra Malik told ETV Bharat, "There is no model to provide benefits for tenants or small farmers following which they always left behind to avail the government schemes. Only the Andhra Pradesh government, a few years ago, took the initiative to identify such farmers and issued Unique IDs but the rest of India is still waiting for a comprehensive policy for tenant farmers."
"Most of the time, it is seen that landholders avail all government benefits and tenant farmers remain empty-handed from benefits such as Fasal Bima Yojna, KCC and subsidy. The main reason is no Land Lease agreement between land owner and tenant farmers," Malik said.
Echoing similar views, another expert Naresh Sirohi told ETV Bharat, "We suggested the government regarding this. This issue will not be resolved until the land leasing agreement is to be made legal policy."
In the absence of legal policy both, tenant farmers and landowners, have to face several legal issues and controversies.
The Centre has approved the contribution of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme till 2025-26 with a total outlay of Rs 69515.71 crore for the period 2021-22 to 2025-26. The government has also approved the creation of a Fund for Information and Technology with a total corpus of Rs 824.77 crore to fund the technological initiatives under the scheme, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Ramnath Thakur informed Lok Sabha.
The farmers' applications whose crops were insured and claims paid under the scheme in 2023-24, number of farmers applications enrolled for crop insurance 14,29,45,872, and claims paid Rs 15,504.87 crore, the MoS Thakur informed LS on Tuesday.
Agriculture Expert and a farmer of Punjab Sukhwinder Kaur told ETV Bharat, "It a big issue if a tenant farmer comes on record then the conflict of land ownership starts between tenant and landowner. If the system goes in a similar way then the issue will remain the same. The government should make a provision of a land lease agreement in which it should be mentioned that a particular person has the land on rent so that he can get the government benefits on his crops. Similarly, it should be mentioned the land owner’s name to avoid land ownership issues.”
