India being one of the most disaster prone countries and agriculture being the source of livelihood of the majority of its people, crop insurance occupies an important place.Crop insurance in India has a long history.
Soon after independence, an assurance given by the Ministry of Food & Agriculture in the central Legislature that crop and cattle insurance would be introduced. A study was thus commissioned in 1947-48. In 1965, the Government introduced a crop insurance bill and circulated a model scheme of crop insurance on compulsory basis to constituent state governments for their views.
The idea of crop insurance emerged in India during the early part of the twentieth century. Yet it was not operated in a big way till recent years. It is still evolving in terms of scope, spread and structure. Despite the long history of extensive agriculture in India, multiple peril crop insurance (MPCI) has only recently become widely available.
PMFBY is one of the popular flagship schemes was introduced in 2016 and claims that the issues with previous schemes are addressed and it mandates effective use of technologies for yield and loss assessments. Gauging crop risk in India is challenging because risks for different locations, crops, and crop seasons depend on many variables, some correlated and some uncorrelated.
No model can predict when the next severe drought, flood, or other crop-damaging event will occur. This fundamental uncertainty makes it even more important for companies to use probabilistic catastrophe models to prepare for such losses. The best risk management is based on an understanding of the probable range and frequency of future losses. Using probabilistic models to assess risks to crop insurance portfolios, including tail risk, helps (re)insurers effectively prepare for inevitable future small and large swings in losses to be experienced by India’s crops across good years and bad.Ultimately, catastrophe models help organizations evaluate the full range of potential events so that they can manage the risk effectively.
Dr. Rusat is a veteran with more than four decades of experience in the Insurance Sector. He retired from The New India Assurance as a Chief Manager. He’s currently the Board Member of Integrated Risk Insurance Brokers Limited
We can conduct a comprehensive bench-marking study in the linkages between climate change patterns and premiums.
We can assist in Expanding the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) network to mitigate ‘Basis risk’
Creating an environment-externalize neutral insurance platform
We can assist the Insurance company in Implementation of PMFBY/ Other Crop Schemes with Livestock Insurance Scheme
We can work to integrate crop insurance as part of an agriculture package (especially in light of climatic variability)
We can leverage our technical expertise to design and adopt a holistic ‘Behavior Change Communication (BCC)strategy’
We can provide a strategic overview to Delink insurance product from titles to expand coverage to small and marginal farmers
We can also provide a mechanism to Delink insurance product from loans given by financial institutions and expand coverage, reduce selective enrollment to non- loanees to address more vulnerable farmers
Our communications team can strengthen citizen’s engagement and feedback through grievance redressal mechanism
Creating awareness, Providing Technical guidance, Training Individuals, Motivate farmers, facilitate payment of Premiums and Claim assistance
Maintain records on Yield, Ensuring crop cutting experiments, Assist in selection of insurers, keeping records of subscriptions and recording all grievance.
Web Portals and Applications to collage land records, Supporting Insurance companies to ensure the use of GPS and mobile phones, SMS based whether data to progressive farmers and a white labelled call center helpline.
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