RYTHU BIMA
Agriculture in Telangana State is characterized by poor productivity and production
owing to frequent occurrence of droughts, lesser technological penetration and poor
investment capacity of the famers, resulting in lower levels of income and social
security to the farmers. The majority of the farmers are small, marginal and resource
poor, dependent solely on farming for their livelihood.
Keeping this in view, in order to ensure the economic and social security to the
farmers, the Government of Telangana has conceptualized and implementing an innovative
scheme named as Farmers Group Life Insurance Scheme (Rythu Bima) in addition to
other initiatives in agriculture sector. This scheme is first of its kind and unique
in the country as it is implemented based on farmer-wise online land data base through
Information Technology and Online Portals and MIS that are being used by all the
outreach officers for effective and efficient implementation.
The main objective of the Farmers Group Life Insurance Scheme (Rythu Bima), is
to provide financial relief and social security to the family members/ dependents,
in case of loss of farmer’s life due to any reason. In the event of the loss of
the farmer life, their families are facing severe financial problems even for their
day-to-day needs. The farmers Group Life Insurance Scheme ensures financial security
and relief to the bereaved members of the farmer’s family. Farmers in the age group
of 18 to 59 years are eligible for enroll under the scheme. The entire premium is
paid by the government to the Life Insurance Corporation of India (Largest public
sector PSU for Insurance in India).In the event of the death of the enrolled farmer
due to any cause including natural death, the insured amount of 5.00 Lakhs INR (Approx.
USD 6928) is deposited into the designated nominee account within (10) days. This
scheme has a tremendous impact on the lives of the bereaved families and helping
their livelihoods, since most of them are resource poor small farmers and belong
to weaker sections of the society.
This scheme has been implemented through the Information Technology with development
of Online Portals and MIS developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC). The uniqueness
of this scheme is that, the nominee is not required to approach any office for the
settlement of claim amount. The outreach officers at village level collects data
from revenue department in the event of loss of life of any farmer and submitted
to the LIC on behalf of designated nominee of the farmer. The claimed amount would
be transferred through RTGS into nominees account.