GS Paper 3:
Topics Covered:
-
Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices; Public Distribution System objectives, functioning, limitations, revamping; issues of buffer stocks and food security; Technology missions; economics of animal-rearing.
Odisha’s Kalia to be merged with PM- KISAN
What to study?
For Prelims: Key features and significance of both the schemes.
For Mains: Why such schemes are good compared to loan waivers?
Context: The Odisha government has decided to merge its flagship scheme- Kalia with the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) yojana, apparently due to financial constraint.
Key features of Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation or KALIA Scheme:
Involves payments to encourage cultivation and associated activities.
Primary targets are small farmers, cultivators and landless agricultural labourers.
All farmers will be provided Rs 10,000 per family as assistance for cultivation.
Each family will get Rs 5,000 separately in the kharif and rabi seasons, for five cropping seasons between 2018-19 and 2021-22.
Targets 10 lakh landless households, and specifically SC and ST families. They will be supported with a unit cost of Rs 12,500 for activities like goat rearing, mushroom cultivation, beekeeping, poultry farming and fishery.
Exception: A critical trade, dairy production, has deliberately been kept out because keeping a cow is more expensive, while milk production needs to have a collection route or agency that processes and refines this low shelf-life product.
It will assist the elderly, sick and differently-abled population who are unable to take up cultivation, by providing Rs 10,000 per household per year.
The scheme includes a life insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh and additional personal accident coverage of the same amount for 57 lakh households.
Crop loans up to Rs 50,000 are interest-free.
This is also going to be an area-specific scheme in the sense that an input support for a particular trade, say mushroom cultivation, will be provided if it is prevalent throughout that locality so that there is aggregation of produce.
About Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi:
- It is a Central Sector Scheme.
- Under this programme, landholding farmer families, having cultivable land up to 2 hectares, will be provided direct income support at the rate of Rs. 6,000 per year.
- This income support will be transferred directly into the bank accounts of beneficiary farmers, in three equal installments of Rs. 2,000 each.
Sources: the Hindu.
