Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana: Minister praises crop insurance scheme 3 yrs after state opted out of it
The 39-second video shows a farmer crying after being woken up by a nightmare about a storm damaging his crop with a caption showing ‘Before 2014’.
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Gujarat Health and Family Welfare Minister Rushikesh Patel (Express File Photo)Minutes after Health and Family Welfare Minister Rushikesh Patel shared a video on social media Tuesday praising the Union government’s Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the Congress asked why the state was praising a scheme it had opted out from and if this was not an attempt to mislead farmers.
Patel, also the spokesperson of the Gujarat government, posted on his X handle BJP’s promotional video praising PMFBY, the flagship crop insurance scheme. He wrote: “Before 2014, farmers would be left pareshan aur hatash (harried and disappointed) if their crop was damaged due to bad weather. Now, those farmers who suffer damages are given financial assistance under the crop insurance scheme. All elect Modi because he sows reality and not dreams.”
The 39-second video shows a farmer crying after being woken up by a nightmare about a storm damaging his crop with a caption showing ‘Before 2014’. The video goes on with another caption of ‘After 2014’, and the same farmer is seen smiling after being woken up by an SMS alert about money been credited into his Jan Dhan account under PMFBY.
Pal Ambaliya, chairman of Gujarat Kisan Congress wondered if Patel didn’t know that PMFBY is no longer available to farmers in Gujarat. “How can he sing praise on Twitter (as X was formerly known) of a scheme which is no longer available? Doesn’t the minister know this much? Or as has been the tradition of BJP, he is lying,” Ambaliya said in a statement.
The Centre had rolled out PMFBY in 2016. Under the scheme, farmers’ share of insurance premium was reduced in the range of 2 per cent to 5 per cent of crop loans availed while Central and state governments bore the rest of the premium in equal share for purchasing crop insurance.
In August 2020, the BJP government in Gujarat, led by Vijay Rupani, opted out of PMFBY citing “high premium” quoted by insurance companies. Instead, the state announced Mukhya Mantri Kisan Sahay Yojana, under which the government promised to compensate farmers if their crop was lost or damaged by adverse weather without requiring farmers to pay any premium.
Ambaliya said: “Rupani government opted out of PMFBY after we exposed corruption in it and showed that insurance companies and not farmers were benefiting. Since then, farmers of Gujarat are without any crop insurance scheme though they need one desperately.”
“The government spokesman knows this well and yet, he talks about it to mislead,” he said, adding that Patel should step down if he didn’t know that Gujarat had already opted out of PMFBY.
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