When Nationalism Enters the Playing Field, Sport Loses Its Soul

-Ramphal Kataria

Athletes are not diplomats, and cricket grounds are not war rooms

Sport was invented to civilise rivalry. When it is instead conscripted into ideological theatre, it ceases to be sport and becomes spectacle—loud, hollow, and morally vacant.

At a moment when India seeks global leadership in sport and actively presses for cricket’s inclusion in the Olympic Games, its conduct on the cricket field tells a troublingly different story. Handshakes are avoided, trophies refused, courtesies withdrawn—not because rules demand it, but because political signalling now intrudes where sporting ethics once prevailed.

This is not strength. It is short-sightedness.

As Nelson Mandela famously said:

“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.”

The Universal Grammar of Sport

The Olympic movement distilled the philosophy of sport into a single proposition: excellence is indivisible from solidarity. The updated Olympic motto—“Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”—adopted by the International Olympic Committee in 2021, did not dilute competition; it clarified its moral boundary. Achievement, it insists, cannot come at the cost of shared humanity.

Cricket internalised this ethic long before Olympic committees codified it. The Preamble – The Spirit of Cricket, enshrined under the International Cricket Council, explicitly demands respect for opponents, umpires, and the game itself—above the letter of the law.

To play hard is mandatory.
To play hateful is forbidden.

Players Are Human Beings, Not Ideological Props

Athletes are not designed for permanent emotional hostility. Expecting players to perform elite sport while suppressing basic human decency is not patriotism; it is psychological coercion.

Sport allows aggression within boundaries, not perpetual animus. To demand visible disdain—refusal of handshakes, symbolic snubs, performative coldness—is to violate the very objective of play.

That is why moments of instinctive humanity resonate so deeply. When Rohit Sharma and Wasim Akram were seen embracing at the same venue where India had just won, that image eclipsed every statistic. It revealed what spectators intuitively know: people crave reconciliation, not ritualised hostility.

Equally telling was the casual public interaction between Jay Shah, ICC chairman, and Shahid Afridi during the Asia Cup—an exchange no reasonable observer found offensive. Selective outrage, then, is not moral; it is political.

India–Pakistan Cricket: Rivalry Without Enmity

Few rivalries are as intense as India–Pakistan cricket. Yet, paradoxically, few rivalries have produced such deep personal camaraderie among players.

From Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, and Sachin Tendulkar to Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, and Waqar Younis, generations of cricketers have demonstrated that on-field rivalry need not translate into off-field hatred.

The standing ovation for Pakistan after their win in Chennai, the viral image of Virat Kohli tying a Pakistani player’s shoelaces, and the enduring respect between former opponents are not aberrations—they are cricket’s natural order.

As C. L. R. James wrote in Beyond a Boundary:

“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”

The Appeal for Imran Khan: Sportsmanship Beyond Borders

The most compelling recent defence of sporting ethics did not come from governments, but from cricketers themselves.

Fourteen former international captains—among them Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev—signed a joint appeal urging the Government of Pakistan to ensure humane medical treatment and dignified detention for former Pakistan captain and prime minister Imran Khan.

Their letter was unambiguous:

“Imran Khan’s contributions to the game are universally admired… Regardless of political perspectives, he holds the honour of having been democratically elected to the highest office in his country. We respectfully urge that he be treated with dignity and basic human consideration.”

This was not politics. It was moral continuity—the extension of cricket’s spirit beyond the boundary rope. To malign such an appeal as “anti-national” is to redefine nationalism as hostility to compassion.

As Albert Camus, himself a goalkeeper, once observed:

“Everything I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”

Diplomacy Once Understood Sport—Why Not Now?

India’s own political history offers a corrective.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during the Lahore peace initiative, understood cricket as people-to-people diplomacy, not ideological combat. His message to Indian cricketers before the 2004 Pakistan tour—“Khel hi nahi, dil bhi jeetiye”—remains unmatched in moral clarity.

Likewise, the 2005 visit of Pervez Musharraf to watch an India–Pakistan ODI was not frivolity; it was an attempt to thaw history through shared spectatorship.

Contrast this with today’s climate, where even neutral professional decisions—such as the mishandling of issue of Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman’s IPL engagement—are allowed to spiral into diplomatic embarrassment, contributing to Bangladesh’s boycott of a global event. Sport suffers, fans lose, and politics gains nothing.

The Current Drift: When Pseudo-Nationalism Enters the Field

What we are witnessing today is a rupture.

Refusals of customary handshakes, visible avoidance of basic sporting courtesies, and public snubs—such as declining a trophy from Mohsin Naqvi in his capacity as ACC chairman—are not acts of strength. They are performative hostility, choreographed for domestic political consumption.

This behaviour is particularly alarming because it appears directionless yet deliberate—suggesting political pressure without institutional ownership. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, despite being the world’s most powerful cricket body, seems unwilling or unable to assert the game’s ethical autonomy.

As George Orwell warned:

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, and disregard of all rules.”

What we are seeing now is precisely this Orwellian degeneration.

Beyond Cricket: The Pattern Repeats

The same reflexive hostility surfaced when Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra was falsely accused of inviting Pakistan’s Olympic gold medallist Arshad Nadeem to the Neeraj Chopra Classic 2025 in Bengaluru. The manufactured outrage forced a clarification that should never have been necessary.

The most dignified response came not from institutions, but from Chopra’s mother, who remarked with disarming simplicity:

“He is like my son. I am happy.”

That, too, is sport speaking—softly but powerfully.

Tennis had already shown the way. The partnership between Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, celebrated globally as the “Indo-Pak Express”, reached a US Open final and became a symbol of peaceful rivalry without surrender of national pride.

The Central Contradiction

India cannot credibly argue for cricket’s Olympic inclusion while eroding Olympic values at home. The Olympics demand neutrality of play, respect for opponents, and insulation of athletes from political vendetta.

A nation confident in its stature does not fear a handshake.
A civilisation secure in itself does not need to choreograph resentment.

Conclusion: Save Sport from the State

Sport is one of humanity’s last remaining moral commons. To convert it into an arena of pseudo-nationalism is to poison a shared inheritance.

Cricket, in particular, was never meant to extend conflict—it was meant to contain it, ritualise it, and finally dissolve it in mutual respect.

If the spirit of the game is lost, no victory will matter.
And no nation—however powerful—will escape the ridicule of having mistaken hostility for honour.

Selected Footnotes & Sources

1. International Olympic Committee, Olympic Motto Update, 2021.

2. International Cricket Council, Preamble – The Spirit of Cricket.

3. Open letter by former international captains on Imran Khan’s health, reported by The Age (Australia), 2024.

4. Nelson Mandela, Speech at the Laureus World Sports Awards, 2000.

5. George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit, Tribune, 1945.

6. C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary, 1963.

7. Records of India–Pakistan cricket diplomacy, 1999–2005.

8. ATP Tour archives: Bopanna–Qureshi partnership, US Open 2010.

1. 

 

When Faith Replaces Citizenship: The Crisis of the Indian Republic

-Ramphal Kataria

From Republic to Religious State: India’s Dangerous Drift

India did not emerge as a nation in 1947. It emerged as a civilisational compact centuries earlier. What we now call “India” was never a monolith of faith, language, or culture. It was a continuously negotiated coexistence—between Shaiva and Vaishnava, Buddhist and Brahmanical, Sufi and Bhakti, tribal and agrarian, Persianate and Sanskritic. This composite culture was neither accidental nor sentimental; it was forged through interaction, conflict, accommodation, and synthesis.

On October 15, 1947—barely two months after Independence and Partition—India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote to the chief ministers of provinces:

“Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”

This was not merely a humanitarian appeal. It was a statement of constitutional philosophy. Nehru understood that if India responded to Pakistan’s religious nationalism by mirroring it, the Republic would forfeit both its moral legitimacy and its democratic future. Secularism, for Nehru, was not hostility to religion; it was state restraint in matters of faith.

Yet this vision was never uncontested. Even within the Congress, conservative Hindu sentiment existed. As prime minister, Nehru nevertheless worked deliberately to marginalise the forces of Hindutva, represented by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Jana Sangh. History’s irony is that only after his death did these forces begin their steady ascent, culminating in the dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

India, which once hoped to chart a path fundamentally different from its neighbour, is now drawing disturbingly close to Pakistan in the fusion of faith and State, differing only in the identity of the religious majority.

Majoritarianism as Structure, Not Rhetoric

The majoritarian character of contemporary India is no longer anecdotal; it is structural. Of the more than 800 Members of Parliament elected on a BJP ticket across the last three general elections, not one is a Muslim. Under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the BJP has consciously constructed a Hindu-only electoral coalition, fighting and often winning elections on the basis of Hindu consolidation alone.

Once power was secured through Hindu-first politics, the sangh parivar moved from mobilisation to social consolidation: the systematic demonisation, criminalisation, and marginalisation of Indian Muslims—and increasingly, Indian Christians. This is not spontaneous prejudice; it is organised othering.

Within living memory, Muslims held cabinet positions, headed the Intelligence Bureau and the diplomatic corps, presided over the Supreme Court, and led the Indian Air Force. Two cities in Modi’s home state once elected Muslim MPs. Today, Muslims are almost entirely absent from positions of public prominence. Working-class Muslims face housing and employment discrimination, routinised humiliation, lynching in the name of cow protection, and bulldozer demolitions masquerading as “law and order.”

Christians, though fewer in number, face parallel targeting—church vandalism, disruptions of Christmas celebrations, and false conversion prosecutions. The message is unmistakable: citizenship is being graded by faith.

Law, Symbol, and Spectacle

Majoritarianism is equally visible on the legal plane. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act introduced religion as a criterion for citizenship for the first time in India’s history, explicitly excluding Muslims. The abrogation of Article 370 cannot be divorced from the fact that Jammu and Kashmir was India’s only Muslim-majority state.

At the symbolic level, the signalling is relentless: saffron robes as executive authority, and the prime minister presiding over the inauguration of a grand Ram temple. These are not benign spectacles. They signal hierarchy and embolden officials to behave as if they are Hindus first and constitutional functionaries later.

Popular culture has been conscripted as well. Bollywood—once a site of composite imagination—is increasingly deployed to portray Muslims as internal enemies and non-Hindus as perpetual outsiders.

Institutional Silence and Electoral Hate

The open avowal of majoritarian bigotry has become routine. Campaign speeches in Assam and elsewhere, particularly by Himanta Biswa Sarma, have led to petitions alleging a sustained pattern of hate speech and incitement against Muslims. That the higher judiciary has largely failed to impose timely restraint is not merely shocking; it is symptomatic of institutional moral exhaustion.

India, in law and politics, in symbol and substance, is thus becoming ever more like Pakistan—except that here Hindus rule over citizens of other faiths.

This Did Not Begin in 2014

Yet to attribute this transformation solely to 2014 would be historically lazy. Hindutva has deep roots—from 19th-century revivalist movements to the Hindu Mahasabha, and the founding of the RSS in 1925. During Nehru’s years it was recessive, not absent.

Its decisive opportunity came through the failures of the post-Nehru Congress. Rajiv Gandhi bears particular responsibility. By overturning the Shah Bano judgment to appease Muslim clerics, and unlocking the Babri Masjid site to placate Hindu hardliners, he legitimised religion as an instrument of governance.

Once religion became statecraft, numerical asymmetry guaranteed that Hindu extremism would dwarf minority extremism. The demolition of the Babri Masjid was not an aberration; it was the logical outcome of this shift. The BJP’s rise—from two seats in 1984 to national dominance within fifteen years—was its political harvest.

Ambedkar’s Diagnosis: Communalism as Structural Tyranny

This trajectory vindicates the warnings of B. R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar rejected the notion that communalism was merely religious misunderstanding. He saw it as a by-product of structural inequality, especially caste.

For Ambedkar, a communal majority is fundamentally different from a political majority. It is permanent, immune to democratic rotation, and therefore a recipe for the tyranny of the majority. This is why he warned that political democracy without social democracy is unsustainable, why he insisted on strict state neutrality in religious affairs, and why he argued that communal conflict often serves as a smokescreen for caste domination.

His insistence that citizens must be “Indians first, Indians last” was a direct rebuke to competitive religious loyalty.

Composite India and Its Dissenters

India’s moral inheritance lies not with majoritarians but with its dissenters. Basavanna rejected ritual hierarchy centuries ago. Jyotirao Phule exposed Brahmanical domination. Periyar dismantled the sanctity of religious authority. The Bhakti-Sufi tradition spoke a shared idiom of devotion and social equality. The communists foregrounded class against communal identity.

They understood a simple truth: religion becomes dangerous when it is mobilised for power.

The Muslim rulers of medieval India were kings, not theologians. Their primary objective was revenue and control, not conversion. To project modern communal identities onto medieval politics is not history; it is ideology disguised as memory.

The Global Record: No Exceptions

The claim of a “civilisational renaissance” collapses under historical scrutiny. Pakistan’s Islamic identity hollowed out democracy and economy alike. Iran’s theocracy destroyed its modernist potential. Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism ignited a civil war that set it back decades. Israel today risks pariah status through theocratic militarism.

Across faiths—Sunni, Shia, Buddhist, Jewish—the lesson is consistent: when religion becomes state ideology, democracy corrodes and human rights shrink. There is no reason to believe Hindus are exempt from this rule.

The Republic at the Brink

India in 2026 stands closer to being a Hindu Pakistan than at any previous moment. Whether this trajectory can be reversed is uncertain. What is certain is this: nations are not made by temples, myths, or majorities, but by equal citizenship.

To abandon that principle is not to revive civilisation—
it is to betray the Republic.

Footnotes

1. Romila Thapar, Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History – on plurality and debate as civilisational features.

2. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian – on pluralism as constitutive of Indian identity.

3. Irfan Habib, writings on medieval Indian polity – critique of communal readings of pre-modern history.

4. B. R. Ambedkar, Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve It – distinction between political and communal majorities.

5. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste – caste as the structural root of social inequality.

6. Jawaharlal Nehru, Letters to Chief Ministers (October 1947) – minority protection and secular statecraft.

7. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism – “normalisation of cruelty” and routinised injustice.

8. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism – critique of self-worshipping nations.

9. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies – dangers of moral absolutism and closed societies.

10. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India – institutionalisation of Hindutva politics.

 

 

 

PMFBY at 10: How Crop Insurance Became a Profit Model

Ramphal Kataria

When Crop Insurance Insures Profits, Not Farmers

“Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy, but the agriculturalist remains its most neglected limb.”

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

As the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana completes ten years, it stands at a decisive crossroads. Rolled out in 2016 as a flagship intervention to shield farmers from the growing volatility of climate and markets, PMFBY was projected as a paradigm shift in agrarian risk management. A decade later, however, the scheme demands evaluation not by intent or technological sophistication, but by outcomes. On this measure, the evidence is deeply unsettling.

Across states and seasons, PMFBY has increasingly exhibited a structural bias: insurance companies consistently earn extraordinary profits while farmers receive delayed, diluted, or denied compensation—even in officially declared disaster years. Haryana and Rajasthan, both BJP-ruled states, merely expose this national design flaw in its most extreme form.

As M. S. Swaminathan once warned,

“If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right.”

PMFBY’s current trajectory gives that warning renewed urgency.

The Arithmetic of Distortion

Between 2023 and 2025, insurance companies operating under PMFBY in Haryana collected ₹2,827 crore in gross premiums and paid out only ₹731 crore in claims, retaining over ₹2,000 crore as surplus. Nationally, insurers collected ₹82,015 crore during the same period, disbursed ₹34,799 crore, and accumulated profits exceeding ₹47,000 crore. Such margins are incompatible with the basic premise of social insurance.

These are not transitional imbalances explainable by isolated seasons of low loss. They represent a persistent pattern. When claim ratios remain below 40% over multiple years—and fall to nearly 25% in Haryana—the scheme ceases to function as a risk-sharing mechanism. Instead, it begins to resemble a publicly subsidised revenue model.

Insurance, in its classical economic sense, exists to redistribute uncertainty. As Karl Polanyi warned in The Great Transformation:

“To allow the market to dictate the fate of society is to dismantle social protection itself.”

PMFBY illustrates this warning with alarming clarity.

Area Averages and the Erasure of Loss

At the heart of PMFBY’s distortion lies its reliance on area-based yield assessment. Crop loss is experienced at the level of individual fields, yet compensation is calculated using block- or district-level averages. This statistical smoothing systematically erases localised devastation caused by floods, waterlogging, pest attacks, or erratic rainfall—the very risks the scheme claims to insure against.

For farmers whose entire crop is destroyed while neighbouring plots survive marginally, “average yield” becomes an accounting fiction. Loss is not compensated; it is averaged out of existence. This design feature disproportionately harms irrigated, high-input states like Haryana, where yield variability is spatially uneven but investment costs are uniformly high.

Technology has not corrected this imbalance. Satellite imagery, drones and digital portals may enhance monitoring, but they do not alter the fundamental logic of averaging. As long as individual loss is subordinated to aggregated yield, under-compensation is not an implementation failure—it is an outcome by design.

As Amartya Sen famously argued,

“Starvation is not caused by a lack of food, but by a lack of entitlement.”

PMFBY reproduces this logic in insurance form: loss exists, but entitlement does not.

Haryana: Insurance Without Indemnity

Haryana represents a near-perfect test case. It combines high insurance penetration, high sums insured, repeated flood and water-logging events, and substantial public premium subsidy. If PMFBY were functioning as advertised—indemnifying losses up to 90%—flood years such as 2023–2025 would have triggered massive payouts.

They did not.

Despite widespread crop damage officially acknowledged by the state, insurer payouts remained strikingly low, generating profit margins exceeding 90% in certain seasons. This is not under-coverage; it is systematic under-indemnification. The promise of protection collapses precisely when protection is most needed.

This is not under-coverage; it is systematic under-indemnification.

As journalist P. Sainath has repeatedly stressed,

“India’s agrarian crisis is not a natural disaster. It is man-made.”

Haryana’s experience confirms that climate shocks alone do not impoverish farmers—institutions do.

The Myth of “Low Premiums”

PMFBY premiums are often defended as nominal because they are expressed as percentages. This defence is arithmetically correct and socially misleading. In high-input agriculture, even a 2% premium translates into several thousand rupees per hectare—an upfront cash outflow for farmers whose incomes are uncertain and seasonal.

For small and marginal farmers, this premium is rarely surplus income; it is frequently financed through borrowing. The asymmetry is stark: premiums are compulsory, immediate and certain; claims are conditional, delayed and opaque. As agricultural economist Utsa Patnaik observed:

“In conditions of distress, even small deductions become instruments of exclusion.”

When compensation arrives months after the loss—after distress borrowing, delayed sowing or reduced acreage—it no longer functions as insurance. It becomes partial reimbursement after damage has already been absorbed.

Insurance as Governance Retreat

PMFBY has also enabled a quiet withdrawal of the State from its historical responsibility of disaster relief. Governments increasingly cite insurance coverage to justify reduced reliance on direct compensation, while insurers cite actuarial thresholds to limit payouts. Farmers are left navigating portals, objections and grievance mechanisms—bearing climate risk, institutional risk and market risk simultaneously.

This retreat is fiscally convenient but socially corrosive. Since the overwhelming share of PMFBY premiums is funded by the Centre and states, low claim ratios signify not efficiency but misallocation of public resources. Taxpayer money underwrites private surplus without commensurate social return.

As M. S. Swaminathan warned:

“Agriculture cannot be left to the market alone when nature itself is unstable.”

A Global Contrast

Globally, publicly subsidised crop insurance regimes treat insurer profit as a ceiling, not an entitlement. In the United States, excess underwriting gains are clawed back through reinsurance agreements. In Canada and much of Europe, crop insurance operates as a public or quasi-public utility, with profits capped and catastrophic losses absorbed by the state. The guiding principle is consistent: when premiums are funded by public money, farmer protection takes precedence over corporate margins.

PMFBY departs sharply from this logic. It permits open-ended profit accumulation even in years of widespread crop failure—an inversion of global best practice.

Conclusion: Insurance Must Insure

A decade after its launch, PMFBY faces a choice. It can either be structurally reoriented as genuine social insurance or continue as a fiscal convenience that socialises losses and privatises gains. Without mandatory minimum claim ratios, transparent and independently audited loss assessments, time-bound settlements and meaningful farmer participation, trust will continue to erode.

As Jawaharlal Nehru reminded the nation,

“Everything else can wait, but not agriculture.”

Globally, publicly subsidised crop insurance treats profit as secondary to protection. In India, PMFBY has reversed this order—guaranteeing insurer gain while farmers absorb the uncertainty it was meant to insure against.

Until this inversion is corrected, crop insurance in India will remain what farmers already know it to be: a system where the farmer bears the risk, the government bears the cost, and the insurer takes the profit.

Footnotes

1. Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY): Operational Guidelines (Revised, 2020).

2. National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP), Government of India. Dashboard data on premium collection, claims paid and claim ratios, accessed for agricultural seasons 2023–2025.

3. Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Performance Audit on Implementation of PMFBY, various state audit reports, including observations on delayed settlements, yield estimation issues and insurer profits.

4. Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Government of India. Demand for Grants (Agriculture) reports, multiple sessions, observations on PMFBY coverage, claim ratios and farmer grievances.

5. State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) Norms, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, for compensation rates relating to crop damage due to floods and other natural calamities.

6. Polanyi, Karl (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press.

7. Sen, Amartya (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford University Press.

8. Swaminathan, M. S. (various speeches and writings). Observations on agricultural risk, climate vulnerability and state responsibility in Indian agriculture.

9. Patnaik, Utsa (2007). The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays. Three Essays Collective.

10. Sainath, P. (2016). Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Penguin India; and later columns on agrarian distress and policy failure.

11. US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Federal Crop Insurance Program: Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA)—provisions relating to profit sharing and risk pooling.

12. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Agricultural Risk Management and Insurance Models, comparative studies on crop insurance systems in the US, Canada and EU.

Crop Insurance or Corporate Insurance? PMFBY, Super-Profits, and the Systematic Under-Compensation of Indian Farmers

-Ramphal Kataria

When Floods Feed Insurers: PMFBY and Haryana’s Farm Distress

“When disaster becomes predictable but compensation does not, the problem is not nature — it is governance.”

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was introduced in 2016 as a landmark reform to protect Indian farmers from crop loss caused by droughts, floods, pests, and climatic shocks. Nearly a decade later, mounting evidence suggests that the scheme has drifted decisively away from its welfare objective.

Across multiple states and seasons, a troubling pattern has emerged:
insurance companies earn extraordinary profits, while farmers receive meagre, delayed, or denied compensation — even in officially declared disaster years.

This is not a Haryana-only problem. Haryana merely exposes the most extreme version of a national design flaw.

The National Picture: Premiums Socialized, Profits Privatized

Between 2023 and 2025, insurance companies operating under PMFBY collected massive premiums — largely funded by public money — while returning a disproportionately small share to farmers as claims.

Table 1: PMFBY — Coverage vs Financial Outcomes (Selected States)

State	Cultivable Area (Lakh Ha)	Farmers Enrolled (Avg / year)	% of Total Farmers Covered	Gross Premium Collected (₹ Cr)	Claims Paid (₹ Cr)	Insurer Profit (₹ Cr)
Haryana	~38.5	~7.5 lakh	~47%	2,827	731	2,096
Punjab	~41.0	~5.0 lakh	~35%	1,920	640	1,280
Rajasthan	~200.0	~55 lakh	~60%	9,850	5,620	4,230
Madhya Pradesh	~150.0	~70 lakh	~65%	11,400	6,950	4,450
Maharashtra	~225.0	~85 lakh	~55%	15,600	9,200	6,400

States with higher enrolment and rain-fed vulnerability (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan) show relatively better claim ratios, while irrigated, high-input states (Haryana, Punjab) generate extraordinary insurer profits, despite repeated crop damage.

Claim Ratios Tell the Real Story

Insurance is meant to redistribute risk. Claim ratio is therefore the single most honest indicator of intent.

Table 2: Claim Ratio (Claims as % of Premium Collected)

State	Claim Ratio (%)	What It Means
Haryana	25.8%	Three-fourths of premium retained by insurers
Punjab	33.3%	Profit-heavy, low farmer return
Rajasthan	57.0%	Moderate redistribution
Madhya Pradesh	61.0%	Relatively farmer-favourable
Maharashtra	59.0%	High losses, still capped payouts

Any insurance scheme with a national claim ratio below 50% over multiple years is not a protection mechanism — it is a revenue model.

Why Haryana Exposes the Deepest Contradiction

Haryana stands out not because it is unique, but because it combines every structural advantage insurers could want — and still delivers the lowest relative payouts.

Haryana combines:

94% irrigation coverage

High scale of finance (higher sums insured)

Repeated flood and water-logging events (2023–2025)

One of the lowest claim ratios in the country

The 2025 Reality Check

Premium collected: ₹1,003.68 crore

Claims paid: ₹95 crore

Profit margin: over 90%

If insurers were genuinely compensating up to 90% yield loss, payouts in that single year would have crossed ₹700–800 crore.

They did not.

Premium Rates: “Low” in Theory, Heavy in Practice

PMFBY premiums are routinely defended as nominal because they are expressed as percentages. This is arithmetically correct and socially misleading.

Table 3: Farmer Premium Burden (2025 Kharif – Haryana)

Crop	Premium Rate	Avg Premium Paid per Hectare (₹)	Avg Cost of Cultivation (₹/ha)
Paddy	2%	~2,125	~42,000
Cotton	2%	~5,435	~55,000
Bajra	2%	~1,024	~18,000
Maize	2%	~1,090	~20,000

For small and marginal farmers, this is upfront cash extraction, often financed through borrowing — not a “token contribution”.

District-Wise Crop Losses vs Compensation (2023–2025)

Repeated heavy rainfall and flooding caused widespread damage. Yet PMFBY payouts remained low, delayed, or absent, forcing reliance on limited disaster relief.

Table 4: District-Wise Damage & Relief (Haryana)

District	Primary Damage	Reported Affected Area	Compensation Released (₹ Cr)	Ground Reality
Fatehabad	Floods, water-logging	4.5+ lakh acres	Part of ₹218.83 (2023)	Recurrent cotton & paddy loss
Hisar	Floods, cotton failure	4.57 lakh acres	₹17.82 (2025)	High PMFBY premium, low claims
Bhiwani	Floods, stagnation	4.56 lakh acres	₹12.15 (2025)	Dharnas over unpaid claims
Charkhi Dadri	Floods	—	₹23.55 (2025)	Highest relief, still inadequate
Sirsa	Floods, cotton pests	—	Included in 2023 relief	Cotton belt under distress
Kaithal	Floods	—	Included	Area-average erases losses
Ambala	Floods	—	Included	Early Kharif damage
Yamunanagar	Floods	—	Included	Delayed assessments

Peak impact (2025):

31 lakh acres initially reported affected by 5.29 lakh farmers

Only ~1.20 lakh acres verified for immediate compensation

₹116.15 crore released—spread thin across districts

The Compensation Gap: What Farmers Get vs What They Lose

Table 5: Compensation Reality

Mechanism	Rate / Outcome
PMFBY payout (typical)	Highly variable, delayed, area-averaged
State disaster relief	₹7,000–₹15,000 per acre
Avg cost of cultivation (paddy/cotton)	₹40,000–₹55,000 per acre
Claimed PMFBY indemnity	“Up to 90%” (rarely realised)

Compensation covers a fraction of costs, not income loss.

Premium Burden: “Low Percentage” ≠ Low Cost

For small holders, premiums are upfront cash extraction—often borrowed—while payouts are uncertain.

As agricultural economist Utsa Patnaik observed:

“In conditions of distress, even small deductions become instruments of exclusion.”

Meagre Compensation: The Hard Numbers Farmers Live With

When PMFBY payouts are delayed, diluted, or denied, farmers fall back on state disaster relief administered through the Revenue and Disaster Management Department.

Compensation rates: ₹7,000–₹15,000 per acre

Timing: Often months after damage

Coverage: Partial, capped, and bureaucratically filtered

This does not reflect actual investment, nor does it compensate income loss. It directly contradicts PMFBY’s advertised promise of 90% indemnity.

From Welfare to Withdrawal: The Policy Shift

Historically, crop failure was treated as a public calamity requiring state intervention. PMFBY was intended to supplement this responsibility.

Instead, it has enabled a governance retreat:

The State cites insurance coverage

Insurers cite actuarial limits

Farmers are left navigating portals, appeals, and protests

As Karl Polanyi warned decades ago:

“To allow the market to dictate the fate of society is to dismantle social protection itself.”

Governance Retreat: From Relief to Risk Transfer

Historically, crop loss was a welfare responsibility handled by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department. PMFBY was meant to supplement relief. Instead, it has become a substitute, allowing governments to step back while insurers step up—to profits.

As M.S. Swaminathan warned:

“Agriculture cannot be left to markets alone when nature itself is unstable.”

Conclusion: Insurance Must Insure Farmers, Not Profits

Across states, seasons, and crops, the evidence converges on one conclusion:

PMFBY has evolved into:

A publicly subsidised profit model

A fiscal convenience for governments

A procedural maze for farmers

It cannot be reformed at the margins. It requires:

Mandatory minimum claim ratios

Caps on insurer profits

Restoration of disaster relief as a State obligation

Farmer participation in assessment and design

Until then, crop insurance in India will remain what farmers already know it to be:

A scheme where the farmer bears the risk, the government bears the cost, and the insurer takes the profit.

Footnotes

1. PMFBY Guidelines (Revised 2020), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare

2. National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) dashboards

3. State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) norms

4. CAG observations on PMFBY implementation

5. Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture reports