This story is from August 28, 2018

90% of Kodagu victims have no crop insurance

90% of Kodagu victims have no crop insurance
Kodagu floods
BENGALURU: Around 90% of the victims of floods and landslides in Kodagu don’t have insurance – neither for their crops nor for their houses which have been devastated over the past few weeks. The remaining 10% cannot claim for damages – their insurance is limited to rain havoc and doesn’t cover ‘acts of God’, that is flood and landslides.
Nanda Belliappa, vice-president of Karnataka Growers’ Federation, said only a small fraction of planters and house owners have flood insurance.

Those whose plantations have been partially or fully destroyed and houses damaged will have to dig deep into their pockets or take loans for restoration. So steep is the cost that some may even have to abandon their properties.”
“We demand that the Centre declare the floods in Kerala and Kodagu a national calamity so that it allows everyone to claim insurance for damage to plantations and properties,” Belliappa said.
Though the central government had introduced national agriculture insurance called Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana around two years ago with great fanfare, it kept cash crops, including coffee, tea, cardamom and rubber, out of it.
Under pressure from growers, the Union ministry of commerce and industry brought in a new scheme exclusively for plantations — Revenue Insurance Scheme for Plantation Crops — but it wasn’t widely publicised. “Most of them don’t know there’s such a scheme. Some availed of the old rain insurance scheme that only covered crops for rain damage,’’ a coffee planter said.

Under this rain insurance, the premium would be 1.5% of total crop value, depending on the risk. This typically covers just damage to coffee blossom and beans from wind and rain, not floods and landslides.
KK Vishwanath, member of Karnataka Coffee Growers Association, said people in Kodagu lacked insurance to protect their crops and houses from an ‘act of god’ because they hadn’t anticipated floods or landslides. Also, banks or lenders didn’t insist on planters purchasing insurance.
The central government, which had made rain insurance mandatory for all plantations while availing of farm loans and subsidies, made it optional this year. “Many people simply didn’t want to pay for insurance as there was severe drought in Kodagu last year and planters had no reason to go for rain insurance given the rainfall pattern,’’ said coffee planter Satish Charamanna.
‘No house insurance’
Not a single house owner had insured her building against calamities. Though some people purchased insurance policies after constructing new houses, they stopped paying premium over time because of the expense. House owners didn’t secure their warehouses and sheds as they felt such a rare disaster is not worth the cost, official sources said.
Meet soon to plan damage control
A high-level meeting of growers will be held soon at Coffee Board in Bengaluru to take stock of the damage. The meeting will be attended by MPs and MLAs from the coffee belt in Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra and Tamil Nadu and all grower organisations will attend it, board chairman Bhojegowda said on Monday. He visited coffee estates in Kodagu and Sakaleshpur and said there hasn’t been such damage over 200 years. Around 28 villages have become coffeeless zones in Kodagu. The planters association has sought waiving of interest on loans amounting to Rs 6,000 crore borrowed till March 31, 2018.
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