In Chhattisgarh’s Bemetara district, about 70 kilometres from the state capital Raipur, standing crops in hundreds of hectares in 60 villages were ruined due to heavy rainfall in the last week of August. The farmers are now caught in the confusion over state and central government rules on crop compensation.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), two insurance companies, Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited and Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, have been authorised to operate — in this state located in Central India. Bemetara district comes under the purview of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.
According to a state government notification on June 16 this year, paddy, despite being a major crop of the region and despite having suffered maximum damage, does not come under the purview of insurance in the event of floods; other crops like soybean and tur (pigeon pea) are covered. However, guidelines of the central government direct the insured amount should be given to farmers in the event of a natural calamity. Farmers are caught in this unending maze of rules.
Apart from heavy crop losses, the villagers in the district have also lost their houses due to continuous heavy rainfall.
“Following two days of incessant rain, water from the flooded Shivnath River entered our homes, forcing us to move half our stuff to others’ houses and seek shelter for the night. The next morning we returned to see our mud house had collapsed,” said Bisru Dhruv, a resident of Bahinga village in Bemetara.
When Gaon Connection visited him, Dhruv was busy repairing his damaged house even as showers lashed the village almost every evening. He also lost the paddy sown in the one-and-a-half-acre (0.6 hectare) patch of land flanking his house. He had insured his crop under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, but the patwari (a land record officer) told him that since his paddy was ruined due to flooding, he would not get any compensation.
In Bahinga village, the recent floods have destroyed paddy on 10.11 hectares and tur and soybean on 14.16 hectares farmland. The insurance company, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, refused to compensate the loss, complained Radheshyam Nishad, the husband of Kumari Nishad, sarpanch of Bahinga gram panchayat.
The situation in Baherghat village on the banks of the Shivnath river is similar. “I cultivate paddy, papaya and tur. I’ve lost paddy and papaya on close to five hectares,” says Abhishek Sharma, a farmer with about 28 hectares of land. Sharma said at least 100 families in his village had suffered damages to crops in about 120 hectares.
The farmers in Dangania village along the river Shivnath shared a similar plight. Avon Sahu cultivated paddy, tur, groundnut and vegetable on 4.4 hectares of land, of which a third was rented (regha). He had not insured his crop because he had outstanding loans. The crop on half his land, especially the paddy patch, has been damaged.
Ramesh Sahu, another villager with four hectares in Dangania village, lost half of his paddy crop and entire tur crop. He did not insure his crop because he wasn’t even aware of the scheme.
There is another reason why farmers sometimes do not notify authorities of crop failure. “If a farmer notifies his damaged crop as per RBC 6-4 (Revenue Book Circular), he will get a compensation of about thirteen thousand rupees per hectare,” an official of the Chhattisgarh agriculture department said on condition of anonymity. “But, in doing so, the farmer will not be able to sell the crop grown there.”
The Shivnath river wreaking havoc in Bahinga, Baherghat and Dangania is not unprecedented. In the last week of August, three rivers of the district — Shivnath, Kharun and Surhi — were in spate due to heavy rain. According to Rahul Tikriha, the sabhapati of Bemetara zilla panchayat, 65 villages have been affected by the resultant flooding.
Villagers in Bached along the course of the river said that of the 647 hectares under cultivation, crop on 40 hectares has been damaged; about 25 farmers have borne the brunt of the flooding. Most farmers that Gaon Connection spoke to, including Lakhan Lal and Santu Sinha, said they were not aware of paddy being excluded from insurance cover for damage caused by deluge.
Questioning the rationale of excluding the main crop of paddy from the purview of insurance and deluge from the list of natural disasters, Tikriha alleged that farmers have been duped. “A deluge is the natural outcome of excessive rainfall. If excessive rainfall is considered a natural calamity, why isn’t a deluge too?” he asked.
Expert-speak?
The Aam Aadmi Party’s Chhattisgarh convener and agricultural scientist Sanket Thakur has been working for a long time in the field of farmer welfare. “Whenever canal water is released or when there is too much rain, the river banks are flooded. Despite this, farmers have been deprived of the safety net called insurance. Most of them are illiterate and know little about insurance procedures,” he added.
What do the government officials say?
While insurance companies claim there is no insurance to paddy lost to flood, Mahadev Manker, district agriculture officer of Bemetara, told Gaon Connection that as per the guidelines, the village unit will undergo four harvesting experiments, the results of which would be compared with the yield of the last five years. “If the yield falls below the last five years’ numbers, the farmers will be given insurance cover,” he explained.
Ram Lakhhan Khare, the agriculture officer of Raipur district, pointed out that “every term and condition of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna can be altered by the state government based upon its own circumstances”.
Like these farmers who lost their crop to floods, more than 125,000 farmers in the district suffered heavy losses during the last rabi crop. They are yet to receive compensation. According to Tikriha, a demand note amounting to Rs 175 crore had been forwarded to the state government by the department of revenue to compensate them. That being the case, one wonders when compensation for the current floods would come in.
Shubham Thakur is an independent journalist from Chhattisgarh.
