The Telangana government’s failure to pay the annual Rs 1,350 crore premium for the Rythu Bima scheme threatens to disrupt life cover for thousands of farmers already dealing with poor rainfall and harvest concerns.
Farmers in Telangana are facing fresh uncertainty after the state government failed to pay the annual premium for Rythu Bima by the August 14 deadline, threatening a scheme that has provided life cover to cultivators for eight years. The lapse comes as many growers are already under strain from patchy rainfall and worries over this year’s harvest.
Rythu Bima offers insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh to eligible farmers, with the government footing a premium that Telangana Today put at nearly Rs 1,350 crore a year. The scheme was introduced by the previous BRS government to give financial support to the families of farmers aged 18 to 59 in the event of death, and it was expanded to include households in which both spouses and children held farmer passbooks.
The missed payment has revived concerns that claims may be disrupted. In June, the agriculture minister, Thummala Nageswara Rao, said the state had already cleared the full annual premium of Rs 1,359.56 crore to the Life Insurance Corporation and insisted the programme was continuing. That statement followed reports in The New Indian Express that LIC had halted claim processing because Rs 441.23 crore in premiums remained unpaid, leaving 7,606 claims worth Rs 380.03 crore pending.
The policy shift may also be tied to the government’s plans for a new welfare model. In March, it announced Indiramma Kutumba Jeevitha Bima, later described by The New Indian Express as Indiramma Bima, with a household survey planned to identify beneficiaries. The new scheme is expected to cover 1.15 crore families and may be launched on November 19, the birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi, although no official rollout date or detailed guidelines have been issued.
For farm families, the immediate concern is not the future plan but the present gap. Yadagiri Reddy of the Telangana Farmers Federation said governments should put politics aside and focus on farmers’ welfare.
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