Members plead for requisite arrangements for crop insurance

New Delhi, July 28 (UNI) The Lok Sabha, after accepting eighteen private members' bill, which would be taken up for discussion in due course, resumed the debate on crop insurance.

Resuming the debate, S Sudhakar Reddy (CPI) said there was an urgent need that the crop insurance agencies should have a fresh look at their policies. ''They should consider the village as an unit for providing the relief and not the mandal as there are number of cases where in one mandal, one village gets rain and the rest did not get a single drop,'' he said.

BJP's M A Kharabela Swain said there was no system of crop insurance and it was only the Government's subsidy which is being distributed by the banks to the farmers.

He also noted that most of the farmers who have committed suicide were growers of cash crop, and were in huge debt from the private money lenders.

Mr Swain also welcomed the ''healthy shift in the banking sector who now do not consider loans to the agriculture sector as being imposed on them by the Government. ''The recovery from this sector is even better than compared to the private setor and is estimated at over 70 per cent,'' he noted.

He said what is needed is a strong support from the Government for the marketing of this crop insurance scheme for an initial period of two to three years. ''Once the farmers were convinced that it is beneficial for them, they would themselves pay the premimum for those crop insurance policies,'' he added.

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