The government in its first Cabinet meeting, in May 2019, extended the assured income support Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme for farmers to benefit over eight lakh big landholders countrywide—having a landholding size of 10 ha (nearly 25 acres) and more.
The PM-KISAN (also PM-Kisan) scheme, made effective restropectively from December 1, 2018, was meant to supplement financial needs and increase farm incomes for small and marginal farmers. It gives direct cash benefit of ` 6,000 annually to them. Now, the scheme has been extended to big landowners by removing the ceiling of 2 hectares, so that all 14.5 crore farmers are eligible for benefits under the scheme. Large landholders account for only 0.6 per cent of total farmers in the country. But their numbers are high in some states.
While about 5.3 per cent of the total farmers in Punjab are large landowners, the number in Rajasthan and Haryana is 4.7 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively. Interestingly, Rajasthan alone has 43 per cent (3.6 lakh) out of the 8.3 lakh big farmers in India. Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat also have comparatively a high percentage of large landowners, among farmers. In other states, however, such large landholding farmers account for less than 1 per cent due to fragmentation of holdings. According to Agriculture Census 2015–16, which is being used as base data to implement the PM-Kisan scheme, 12 states, including these as well as Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra
Pradesh, account for 93 per cent of total big farmers in the country. In contrast, there are 13 states/UTs, including Goa, Sikkim, and Delhi, and mainly north-eastern states, where the number of large farmers is negligible. Among the remaining states, Telangana has 9,000 large farmers, followed by Assam and Odisha (4,000 each), Bihar and Himachal Pradesh (3,000 each), Kerala (2,000), and Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir (1,000 each).
Details
Under the scheme, each of the landholding farmer is eligible to get ` 6,000 per annum in three equal instalments from the central government. Broadly speaking, this amounts to only about a tenth of the production cost per hectare or consumption expenditure for a poor household. But, the scheme, though offering just a meagre sum, promises some relief to the distressed farmers by partially supplementing their input costs or consumption needs. In reality, however, its benefits have not reached farmers in most parts of India.
The financial benefit under the scheme is transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries as and when their verified data is uploaded. Over 3 crore marginal and small landholding farmers, with a landholding size of up to two hectares, received their first instalment of ` 2,000 each by the end of May 2019, while more than 2 crore of them even got their second instalment.
As per the guidelines of the scheme, landless farmers and sharecroppers would not qualify for the benefit under the scheme. Also, the landholder farmers whose one or more members of the family are either former or present MPs, MLAs, mayors, chairpersons of district panchayats, or holders of any constitutional posts, would be excluded from the list of beneficiaries. Similarly, even those farmer families will not be eligible for benefits whose one or more members are working or retired servants (excluding Class IV or Group D employees) or pensioners whose monthly pension is ` 10,000 or more or income tax payees in last assessment year or professionals like practising doctors, engineers, lawyers, chartered accountants, and architects.
—sidelight—
Rural India has two-thirds of India’s population but contributes to barely 15 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
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Concerns The scheme is, however, yet to reach farmers in most of the country’s regions, and so, has a long way to go in terms of implementation and its scope of coverage.
* About 60 per cent eligible farmers are still deprived of the scheme as states have not yet added them to the list of beneficiaries.
* A majority of the intended beneficiary households have not got their first instalment amount of ` 2,000. Only 3.39 crore (27 per cent) have received it. Again, only some 2.97 crore (24 per cent) households have received the second instalment.
* Of the ` 75,000 crore expenditure estimated, only 17 per cent has been spent.
* Discrimination among states in disbursement to farmers is a serious issue. Uttar Pradesh accounts for one-third of the total beneficiary households: 33 per cent in the first instalment and 36 per cent in the second instalment. Half of the states’ SMF households have received their share so far. Two other states also have got a significant share: Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. But 17 states have received less than 9 per cent of the first instalment!
Comments For the scheme to be really beneficial, it needs to be uniformly implemented across the regions.
It is argued that as the scheme takes a huge fiscal share, it has to trigger other structural reforms. The direct benefit transfers should translate into investment support that would go on to subsume the huge subsidies towards fertilisers, food procurement, electricity, etc. But there are no signs of that. However, the fact is that it is not meant to be a fix for bigger structural issues. These cash transfers cannot be effective if the state withdraws from its long-term budgetary commitments, such as in subsidies for inputs, extension services, procurement assurances and irrigation, which provide stability to agricultural production. Government intervention in grain markets is crucial for food security.
The scheme includes only landowners and not tenants, who constitute some 13.7 per cent of farm households. So, the need is to include landless tenants and other poor households within the ambit of the scheme.
It fares poorly as compared to other state schemes. For example, there is Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu scheme where the cash transfer is linked to the size of the farmer’s land, unlike the case in PM-Kisan. The link with scale of production (farm size) makes the support more substantial in the former case. Odisha has its Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme which, unlike PM-Kisan, includes poor landless rural households in its ambit.
PM-Kisan Payments Only via Aadhar-Linked Bank Accounts It was reported in December 2019 that the instalment for the December 2019 to March 2020 was to be transferred to Aadhar-authenticated bank accounts only—at one go—of more than 50 million beneficiaries.