Noting that the government is fully committed to furthering the welfare of farmers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday hailed the union cabinet’s decision to continue Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and restructured weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme and extend the one-time special package on di-ammonium phosphate beyond NBS subsidy from January 1 to December 31, 2025.
“Ours is a Government fully committed to furthering welfare of farmers. We are proud of all our farmer sisters and brothers who work hard to feed our nation. The first Cabinet of 2025 is dedicated to enhancing prosperity for our farmers. I am glad that key decisions have been taken in this regard,” PM Modi said in a post on X.
“The Cabinet decision on extending the One-time Special Package on Di-Ammonium Phosphate will help our farmers by ensuring DAP at affordable prices,” he added.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the extension of the One-time Special Package on Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) beyond the NBS subsidy for the period from January 1 this year till further orders to ensure sustainable availability of DAP at affordable prices to the farmers.
The tentative budgetary requirement would be approximately upto Rs 3,850 crore.
The Union Cabinet also 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.
The decision will help in risk coverage of crops from non-preventable natural calamities for farmers across the country till 2025-26.
In addition, 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 namely, YES-TECH, WINDS, as well as research and development studies.
Yield Estimation System using Technology (YES-TECH) uses Remote Sensing Technology for yield estimation with minimum 30 per cent weightage to Technology based yield estimates. Nine major states are currently implementing (namely AP, Assam, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, MP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka).
Other states are also being on-boarded expeditiously. With wider implementation of YES-TECH, Crop Cutting Experiments and related issues will be gradually phased out.
Under YES-TECH Claim calculation and settlement has been done for 2023-24. Madhya Pradesh has adopted 100 per cent technology based yield estimation.
Weather Information and Network Data Systems (WINDS) envisages setting up Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at block level and Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs) at panchayat level.
Under WINDS, 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 & Rajasthan are in progress), while other states have also expressed willingness to implement.
WINDS could not be implemented by states during 2023-24 (1st year as per EFC) due to various background preparatory and planning work required before tendering.
Accordingly, the Union Cabinet has approved 2024-25 as the first year of implementation of WINDS as compared to 2023-24 earlier to give benefit to state governments with higher central fund sharing in 90:10 ratio.
The government said all efforts are made and will continue to be made to saturate all farmers of northeastern states on priority.
However, due to the scheme being voluntary and low gross cropped area in the northeastern states, flexibility has been given to avoid surrender of funds and for reallocation in other development projects and schemes with fund requirements.
Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan hailed the union cabinet decisions and said that the development of agriculture and the welfare of farmers is topmost priority of the central government.
Lauding the union cabinet decisions, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the cabinet decisions will provide financial security to farmers on crop loss due to natural disasters. Affordable and continuous availability of fertilizer will be ensured, which will increase agricultural production, he said. (ANI)
