Agricultural Risk and Insurance in India: Problems and Prospects

Agriculture production and farm incomes in India are frequently affected by weather and climatic aberrations like droughts, floods, cyclone, frost, storms, land slides, etc. Outbreak of epidemics, fire, and market fluctuations are the other factors which seriously affect production and farm income. All these events are beyond the control of the farmers. With the growing commercialisation of agriculture, the magnitude of shock due to unfavourable eventualities is increasing and the need to protect farmers against production and income losses is becoming stronger. Agricultural insurance is considered an important mechanism to effectively address the risk to output and income resulting from various natural and manmade events. Despite various schemes launched from time to time, agricultural insurance in India has not made much headway even though the need to protect country's farmers from agricultural variability has been a continuing concern of agriculture policy. This book examines the genesis of agricultural insurance in India and discusses various agricultural insurance schemes launched in the country from time to time and the coverage provided by them. The book also looks into the role of government in implementing various agricultural insurance schemes and suggest effective agriculture insurance programme for India.