STM Article Repository

India is one of the most climate-prone countries in the world. In the last decade, India has suffered crop losses almost every year either due to floods or drought or frost/extreme temperatures. Agriculture is the mainstay of the rural economy in India and is largely carried out by small and marginal farmers who have poor access to credit, high dependence on rainfall and majority of whom practice subsistence farming. Despite the efforts to revise the insurance scheme features under PMFBY, there are reported issues on enrollment, claim and settlement and even discontinuity. Hence it is essential to analyze the constraints and suggestions of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of PMFBY scheme. Hence, the study was conducted in Kolar district of Karnataka state during the year 2021-2022. All the five taluks of Kolar district were selected for the study. From each of the taluk 30 PMFBY beneficiaries and 10 non – beneficiaries were identified for the collection of data by using a simple random sampling method. Thus, the total sample was consisted of 150 beneficiaries and 50 non – beneficiaries. The results revealed that the constraints faced by the beneficiary with respect to availing benefits from PMFBY were, ‘delay in getting the claims under PMFBY’, ‘inadequate compensation under PMFBY’, ‘officials bias in loss assessment making’ and ‘insurance company do not give any reason about why eligible farmers did not receive insurance amount’ were accorded I, II and III ranks, respectively. When it comes to PMFBY non-beneficiaries, were not availing benefits of the scheme due to: ‘lack of documents in the name of the cultivar’ (I rank), ‘lack of awareness about the PMFBY’ (II rank) and ‘requires multiple visit to the department from enrollment to claim’ (III rank). Major suggestions expressed by the beneficiaries for improving PMFBY scheme are: ‘strict measures to timely payment of insurance amount’, ‘reduction on premium amount for horticulture crops’ and ‘claim disbursement before starting of the next season’ were accorded I, II and III ranks, respectively. In respect to suggestion’s expressed by non-beneficiaries for improving PMFBY scheme were: ‘creating awareness about PMFBY scheme’ (I rank), ‘creating facilitation on PMFBY scheme by giving training to the farmers’ (II rank) and ‘submission of appropriate documents to agriculture department’ (III rank).