Over 11 lakh farmers in Karnataka opted for crop insurance in 2020 Kharif season.
Bengaluru, October 18, 2022: Karnataka has seen a decrease in the claim settlement time for crop insurance, from over eight months to around one-two months.
According to the Department of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka, Samrakshane portal was launched in 2017 for providing digital solutions to manage crop insurance schemes. After 2019 it integrated the Aadhar and BHOOMI portal for accurate disbursal of crop insurance claims.
Narayanmurthy, a farmer in Mysuru district of Karnataka who benefited from the scheme said, “The money we put in the crop gets reimbursed by the insurance we take, if anything happens to our crop. This is very helpful and we feel relieved.”
Data from the Department of Agriculture shows that claim settlement ratio is almost 100 percent every year. Almost all of these claims are settled through the Samrakshane portal. The portal facilitates conducting of crop cutting experiments (CCE) completely digital. CCE is an estimation of crop yield in a particular area.
Praveen Kumar, Deputy Manager, Agriculture Insurance Company of India said “It is very efficient for the insurance companies as well as farmers. Through the Samrakshane portal we can view any crop related data anytime and anywhere. It also helped in making insurance claims more accurate, as earlier a farmer can claim multiple insurance at once, and there was no centralised system among all the stakeholders to verify the authenticity of the claims. Also the portal is geolocation based. Since for a farmer to enrol in crop insurance it requires to upload four photos and four videos of their field, they can not do it unless they are present on their farm.”
Almost 51 percent of India’s agriculture is rain-fed. Farmer leaders believe, today the agriculture sector needs insurance more than ever. K T Gangadhar, Karnataka farmer leader said, ” At every stage we need insurance, it is compulsory. If the insurance is there, we will get reimbursed. The farmers then will be able to recover easily from the loss they faced.
Praveen Kumar explained that the disbursal of insurance claims is done directly through UPI by the insurance companies through the Samrakshane portal. This has made the payment completely transparent and quick.
