New Delhi: The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the continuation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme till 2025-26 with an overall outlay of Rs 69,515.71 crore from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
Briefing the reporters here, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, "The decision will help in risk coverage of crops from non-preventable natural calamities for farmers across the country till 2025-26. In addition to the same, for large-scale technology infusion in the implementation of the scheme leading to increasing transparency and claim calculation and settlement, the Union Cabinet has also approved the creation of the Fund for Innovation and Technology (FIAT) with a corpus of Rs 824.77 crore."
The fund will be utilised towards funding technological initiatives under the scheme, YES-TECH, and WINDS as well as Research and Development studies, Vaishnaw added.
Yield Estimation System using Technology (YES-TECH) uses Remote Sensing Technology for yield estimation with a minimum 30 per cent weightage to technology-based yield estimates. 9 major states are currently implementing it - Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.
Other states are also being on-boarded expeditiously. With the wider implementation of YES-TECH, Crop Cutting Experiments and related issues will be gradually phased out. Under YES-TECH Claim calculation and settlement have been done for 2023-24. Madhya Pradesh has adopted 100 per cent technology-based yield estimation, the Union Minister said.
Vaishnaw further said weather Information and Network Data Systems (WINDS) envisages setting up Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at the block level and Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs) at the panchayat level.
Under WINDS, a 5 times increase in current network density is envisaged to develop hyper-local weather data. Under the initiative, only data rental costs are payable by Central and State governments. Nine major states are in the process of implementing WINDS (Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, Assam, Odisha, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan), while other states have also expressed willingness to implement.
All efforts are made and will continue to be made to saturate all farmers of North Eastern States on priority. To this extent, the centre shares 90 per cent of premium subsidy with the North Eastern States. However, due to the scheme being voluntary and low gross cropped area in the North Eastern states, flexibility has been given to avoid surrender of funds and for reallocation in other development projects and schemes with fund requirements, he added.
