The cabinet on Wednesday ratified India’s first major crop damage insurance scheme for farmers, a government source said, in what is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first significant move to address rural hardship.
The impact of unseasonal rains and two straight years of drought on agriculture that sustains over two-thirds of India’s 1.25 billion people has dented Modi’s popularity in the countryside, contributing to a humiliating loss for the premier in elections last year in the largely rural state of Bihar.
Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said last week that New Delhi will launch the crop insurance scheme in the fiscal year starting April 1.
