Agricultural Risk and Insurance in India

Problems and Prospects

S. S. Raju‚ Ramesh Chand

Agriculture production and farm incomes in India are frequently affected by weather and climatic aberrations like droughts, floods, cyclone, frost, storms, land slides, etc. Outbreak of epidemics, fire, and market fluctuations are the other factors which seriously affect production and farm income. All these events are beyond the control of the farmers. With the growing commercialisation of agriculture, the magnitude of shock due to unfavourable eventualities is increasing and the need to protect farmers against production and income losses is becoming stronger. 

Agricultural insurance is considered an important mechanism to effectively address the risk to output and income resulting from various natural and manmade events. Despite various schemes launched from time to time, agricultural insurance in India has not made much headway even though the need to protect country’s farmers from agricultural variability has been a continuing concern of agriculture policy. 

Dr. S. S. Raju is working as a Senior Scientist (Agricultural Economics) at National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP), New Delhi. He has been awarded APAU Agro-economic Research Gold Medals at M.Sc (Ag) and Ph.D (Ag) levels for obtaining highest OGPA in the discipline of Agricultural Economics at University level. He is also the recipient of the Team Research award of ICAR for the biennium 1999–2000. Dr. Raju is engaged in research on agricultural instability, livestock economics, agriculture growth and development. He has authored 25 research papers published in national and international journals. He was associated with 10 national and international research projects.

Dr. Ramesh Chand is ICAR National Professor, and Theme Leader (Market and Trade) at NCAP, New Delhi, India. Prior to this he has been Acting Director and Principal Scientist at NCAP, Professor and Head-Agricultural Economics Unit at Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), Professor of Marketing at Punjab Agricultural University. He was visiting Fellow at Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba Shi, Japan (2003). His Ph.D. thesis, submitted to Indian Agricultural Research Institute, was selected for Jawaharlal Nehru Award of Indian Council of Agricultural Research in recognition of its outstanding research contributions. Dr. Chand worked as consultant for FAO, ESCAP, UNDP, World Bank, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi and Government of Punjab. He has served on several high level committees of various Ministries at the Centre. At present he is engaged in research on food policy, trade liberalisation, WTO and Asian agriculture and development economics. Dr. Chand is author of 5 books and 70 research papers published in reputed national and international journals.