Redefining Agriculture: Government’s Efforts To Double Farmers’ Income

The Indian government has been working to double the income of farmers and has implemented several policies, reforms, developmental programs and schemes to achieve this goal. In this article, we will take a closer look at these schemes and explore their salient features.

Overview

One of the most significant features of the government’s efforts to increase farmers’ income is the unprecedented enhancement in budget allocation. During the fiscal year 2013-14, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying were allocated a mere sum of Rs. 30,223.88 crore in their budget, which has now increased by more than 4.35 times to Rs. 1,31,612.41 crore in 2023-24.

The government has also launched the PM-KISAN scheme which provides Rs. 6,000/year to farmers in three installments. Over 11 crore farmers have received more than Rs. 2.24 lakh crore. The PMFBY, launched in 2016, addresses high premium rates and capping issues. Farmers paid Rs. 25,174 crore as premium and received claims of over Rs. 1,30,185 crore (Provisional).

The government has also focused on providing institutional credit for the agriculture sector, which has increased from Rs. 7.3 lakh crore in 2013-14 to a target of Rs. 18.5 lakh crore in 2022-23. Since February 2020, a special drive has been taken up to provide concessional institutional credit to all PM-KISAN beneficiaries through Kisan Credit Cards (KCC), and as of 30.12.2022, as part of the drive, 389.33 lakh new Kisan Credit Card (KCC) applications have been approved with a sanctioned credit limit of Rs. 4,51,672 crore.

Another major initiative of the government is the fixing of Minimum Support Price (MSP) at one-and-a-half times the cost of production. From 2018-19, the minimum support price (MSP) for all Kharif, Rabi, and other Commercial crop MSP increased to provide 50% return over all-India cost of production.

To promote organic farming, the government launched the Paramparagat Krishi VikasYojana (PKVY) in 2015-16, covering an area of 6.53 lakh hectares and benefitting 16.19 lakh farmers. Namami Gange Programme covered 1.23 lakh hectares and natural farming covered 4.09 lakh hectares. The government launched the Mission Organic Value Chain Development in North East Region  (MOVCDNER) covering 1,72,966-hectare area.

The Per Drop More Crop (PDMC) scheme launched in 2015-16 aims to increase water use efficiency, reduce input costs and enhance productivity through micro-irrigation technologies like drip and sprinkler systems. So far, an area of 72 lakh hectares has been covered under Micro irrigation through the PDMC scheme from the year 2015-16.

The government established a Micro Irrigation Fund with NABARD, initially with a corpus of Rs. 5,000 crore. In the 2021-22 Budget Announcement, it was mentioned that the fund’s corpus is set to increase.

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