Crop insurance does not help farmers, new income plan soon: Rajnath Singh

New Delhi: Under attack from the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, the Narendra Modi government is reworking its strategy on the farmers’ issue. Taking a leaf out of the Atal Behari Vajpayee regime, when present home minister Rajnath Singh was the agriculture minister, the Modi government is looking at a new scheme on the lines of the then National Farm Income Insurance Scheme, where farmers were assured a minimum income on the basis of the land they owned instead of the crop outcome.

Mr Singh had introduced this scheme in 30 districts during the Vajpayee era which brought major relief to farmers hit by the vagaries of nature. The move by the Modi government to come up with a new scheme on similar lines has come after Mr Singh pointed out that the existing crop insurance scheme is proving inadequate to the needs of the farmers suffering extensively across states due to untimely rains and severe crop damage.