In poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, a prime ministerial farm insurance programme disillusions farmers—and pushes some to suicide—with claims mired in delays and bureaucratic errors. In drought-prone Bundelkhand’s Jhansi district alone, thousands of farmers wait for resolution, while banks, insurers, state govt pass the buck.

Lucknow: Omprakash Gupta, 53, a farmer and resident of the Todi-Fatehpur gram panchayat in Jhansi district, in the arid Bundelkhand region bordering Madhya Pradesh, died by suicide on 24 July 2021.

The family owns three hectares of farm land, his son Anil told Article 14. His father had availed a loan of Rs 300,000 from Punjab National Bank’s branch in their village, a crop loan offered to holders of Kisan Credit Cards, on 16 March 2018, for his kharif crop.

Gupta also paid the premium for the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for 2018, 2019 and 2020—farmers who take loans must compulsorily sign up. The PMFBY was launched in 2016 to provide farmers an affordable crop insurance product that would cover risks from pre-sowing to post-harvest stage.

Farmers in the Bundelkhand region have suffered three consecutive years of crop loss on account of drought and heavy rains.

“But my father did not receive an insurance payout for even a single year,” said Anil, who is in his late thirties. If their claim had been accepted at least one year, about Rs 150,000 he estimated, a large part of their debt could have been repaid. “My father would have been alive today," he said.

For Gupta’s younger daughter’s wedding in June 2019, he took a handful of small loans, this time from villagers, said Krishna Murari, Gupta’s nephew.

Villagers in Todi-Fatehpur said they understood Gupta’s pain, for almost every farmer in the village had had similar experiences. None of his creditors in the village ever demanded that the money be repaid.

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