Crop Insurance in India: Earlier Initiative to Latest Development

Abstract

Owing to extreme dependence of the farm sector on weather, farmers go through hardships in India, which results in instability of farm income and affects wellbeing of farmers. One of the policy interventions of the government in this regard is providing crop insurance to the farmers. But the government promoted crop insurance schemes have met with limited success. The present paper deals with the theoretical perspective of crop insurance and explains why the private insurers shy away from the crop insurance market. The paper also reports the performance and penetration of previously implemented crop insurance schemes in India.