Policy Update
Muskan Thakur
Background
The National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) was developed as the digital interface for the flagship crop-insurance scheme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare. The PMFBY was launched in 2016 to provide affordable crop-insurance cover to farmers in India, ensuring protection against natural risks (drought, flood, hailstorm, pests/diseases) from pre-sowing to post-harvest. The need for NCIP arose because earlier insurance schemes had issues of delayed claim settlement, fragmented data, low transparency and inefficiencies in enrolment and monitoring. The objective of NCIP is to digitise the process (notification of crop seasons, enrolment of farmers, premium remittance, claims settlement) and provide a single platform for data sharing among banks, insurance companies, states and the Centre.
Timeline: The portal has been operational (in a full or phased manner) since around 2022 as part of digitization efforts of PMFBY.
Beneficiaries: All notified farmers (loanee & non-loanee), tenant farmers in notified crops and areas under PMFBY, banks/financial institutions, state governments, insurers, and ultimately the farmer-beneficiaries.
Functioning
The NCIP functions as the backbone IT platform for PMFBY implementation. It supports:
- Notification of insured crops, areas and seasons.
- Enrolment of farmers via banks, CSCs, intermediaries and the portal itself; uploading of farmer data to NCIP.
- Premium calculator utilities, sum insured calculation, linking of land records, Aadhaar/bank account verification.
- Claims processing: integration with PFMS (Public Finance Management System) and insurance company systems (the “Digiclaim” module) to automate claim processing, verify yield/crop damage, credit claims to farmers’ accounts.
- Data repository and monitoring: NCIP repositories crop-yield data (via crop-cutting experiments, remote sensing), tracks performance, delays, premium/subsidy flows.
Challenges
- There have been instances where banks/financial institutions and some states failed to upload farmer data on time into NCIP, causing farmers to miss enrolment deadlines.
- While the technology integration has increased (remote sensing, yield estimation systems), implementation across all states still varies, causing delays in yield verification and claim settlement. For example, migration to YES-TECH (remote sensing based yield estimation) is underway from Kharif 2023 onwards.
- Some states may face issues of land-record integration, digitisation of CCE (Crop Cutting Experiment) data, and capacity constraints in insurance companies or state authorities.
- Despite digitalisation, delays in claim payment still happen; the new rule (12 % penalty on delays) reflects this challenge.
Performance
- According to a PIB press release, under PMFBY since inception up to 30 June 2025: 78.407 crore farmer applications insured; 22.667 crore farmers have received claims totalling ₹1.83 lakh crore.
- The NCIP portal is now the sole source of enrolment for PMFBY, ensuring centralised data.
- Digitalisation via NCIP has enabled claims integration with PFMS, Aadhaar verification and automatic penalty for delay.
Impact
- The NCIP has improved transparency and efficiency of crop insurance in India, reducing paperwork, enabling faster enrolments and better monitoring. Some literature notes India “has transformed crop insurance from a paperwork-driven scheme into one of the world’s largest digital, transparent and farmer-centric ecosystems” via NCIP.
- For farmers, easier enrollment and claims settlement implies better protection of incomes in face of natural calamities, reducing vulnerability. For example, in Chhattisgarh, a news coverage mentions transfer of ₹152.84 crore to 1,41,879 farmers in Aug 2025 via DBT.
- The portal’s function of linking land records, yield estimation via remote sensing, and digital payment builds trust and can incentivise farmers to adopt the scheme.
- On a systemic level, NCIP helps the Ministry and states monitor performance, identify bottlenecks, and plan risk-mitigation strategies.
- However, there is limited independent literature showing long-term impact on farmers’ income stability, credit flow, or whether the risk-coverage leads to investment in modern farming, these remain under-researched.
Emerging Issues
- Some states/stakeholders still lag in uploading data or integrating land records; delays still happen.
- While the 12% penalty for claim-payment delay is a positive step, actual enforcement and whether it leads to behavioural change remains to be evaluated.
- Remote-sensing based yield estimation (YES-TECH) is in phased rollout; full coverage and accuracy across all notified crops/states is a challenge.
- Farmer awareness and digital literacy: Smaller, marginal farmers and tenant farmers may still face barriers in using a portal, verifying enrollment, tracking claims.
- Premium subsidy burden: The finances of the scheme (subsidy from Centre + States) and whether the portal improves cost-effectiveness remain to be fully analysed.
- Data integrity and verification: Crop cutting experiments, yield data capture, and preventing fraud remain perennial issues.
Way Forward
- The NCIP should aim for 100% digital end-to-end enrolment and claim settlement across all states and notified crops including small & marginal farmers and tenant farmers.
- Expand YES-TECH/remote-sensing yield estimation to cover more crops and states sooner, reducing dependence on traditional CCEs, thus improving speed and accuracy.
- Integrate NCIP with additional data sources (weather-stations, satellite imagery, soil data, land records) to improve risk assessment, early warning and premium pricing.
- Build dashboard analytics for states and Centre to identify hotspots, delays and performance gaps; use this data for policy refinement.
- Increase farmer awareness campaigns to ensure more farmers enrol in time, understand their rights and claim process; integrate mobile apps/USSD for low-literacy farmers.
- Review subsidy structure and premium cost to ensure sustainability of the scheme; use portal data to evaluate cost-benefit and design improvements.
- Encourage independent evaluation of NCIP’s impact on farm incomes, credit access, and resilience of farmers to climate risk; publish periodic performance reports.
- Align NCIP evolution with India’s climate-resilience agenda by linking crop insurance with climate adaptation measures, parametric insurance models and incentive for preventive practices.
References
- Agriculture Insurance Company of India. (2025, September 23). How Agriculture Insurance Company integrates technology in Indian crop insurance. Verzekeraars.nl. https://www.verzekeraars.nl/en/publications/news/aiag-how-agriculture-insurance-company-integrates-tech-in-indian-crop-insurance
- Government of India. (2014, February). National Crop Insurance Programme (NCIP): Operational guidelines. Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. https://pmfby.gov.in/pdf/aws_gui_cre.pdf
- InvestKraft. (2025). Crop insurance in India: Types, benefits, and how to apply. https://www.investkraft.com/blog/crop-insurance
- Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. (2024, November). Crop insurance. Government of India. https://agriwelfare.gov.in/en/CropInsurance
- MyGov. (n.d.). Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). Government of India. https://www.mygov.in/campaigns/pmfby/
- Press Information Bureau. (2025, August 11). Empowering Annadatas: Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?ModuleId=3&NoteId=155010&id=155010
- Press Information Bureau. (2023, September 21). National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) is the only source of enrolment under PMFBY. Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1848717
- Press Information Bureau. (2023, December 2). Digitalization of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1982800
- Press Information Bureau. (2025, June 30). Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) performance update: Farmers insured and claims settled. Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2151351
- Sansad of India. (2025). Unstarred Question No. 2249: Performance of crop insurance schemes. Rajya Sabha. https://sansad.in/getFile/annex/268/AU2249_Ot0xYu.pdf
- The Times of India. (2025, August 2). Centre to transfer ₹152 crore crop insurance claims to 1.4 lakh farmers in Chhattisgarh. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/centre-to-transfer-152-cr-crop-insurance-claims-to-1-4l-farmers-in-state/articleshow/123220807.cms
About the contributor
Muskan Thakur is a Research Intern at IMPRI and a Master’s student in Economics at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune.
Acknowledgement
The author extends her sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team and Ms. Aasthaba Jadeja for her invaluable guidance throughout the process.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
Read more at IMPRI
Conceptualising Cyber-Crime Against Women: Beyond Numbers and “Online Misbehaviour”
Did the Indian Mental Healthcare Act (2017) move the money? A look at DMHP approvals, 2015–2024
