The central government has finally decided to include tea and other cash crops in the ambit of a crop insurance scheme to compensate the losses that the growers bear because of adverse weather conditions.
The decision has brought cheers to over one-and-a-half lakh small tea growers, most of whom have their plantations in the tea-producing states of Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
On June 10, the chief executive officer of the PMFBY (Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bimal Yojana), who is also a joint secretary in the Union ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare, has sent a letter to the secretaries of the agricultural departments of different states, mentioning that it has been decided to include some of the plantation crops, including tea, in the Revised Weather Based Crop Insurance
Scheme (RWBCIS).
Some other plantation crops which have been included under the scheme include coconut, palm, cardamom, and rubber.
“It is a major development for us. Finally, the central government has realised that we are farmers who produce tea leaves. We hope thousands of small tea growers spread across these four states would be enrolled as beneficiaries of this insurance scheme,” said Bijoygopal Chakraborty, president of the Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers’ Associations (Cista).
In Bengal, there are around 50,000 small tea growers in the districts of North Dinajpur, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Cooch Behar.
The small tea sector, Chakraborty pointed out, contributes over half of the total tea produced in India.
RWBCIS is a scheme where the growers or farmers covered under it are compensated because of financial losses suffered by crop losses resulting from adverse weather conditions, sources said.
In the letter, the senior official has also sought certain information from the state governments. These include status approval by the state-level committees on crop insurance for inclusion of plantation crops (only tea in case of Bengal), any budgetary allocation for such scheme by the finance department of the state concerned, the status of tenders for selection of insurers and the status for implementation of the scheme.
“We hope the state government will do the needful. It will largely help the growers, most of whom run their families with the earnings made from the plantations. They often suffer crop losses due to inclement weather conditions, and the insurance cover is necessary for them,” the Cista president added.