Will drones help farmers?

Damage assessment due to natural calamities needs upgrade

It is paradoxical that in a country such as India, where the existing mechanisms for managing floods, droughts and other natural calamities are largely inefficient, the farmers - a group most adversely affected - are disinterested in insuring their crops. The answer lies in the poor state of damage assessment. The fact is, the use of modern technology, including remote sensing and hi-tech weather forecasting techniques, is minimal in most states. As a result, it is difficult to mitigate the damage when natural calamities strike. Moreover, the procedures commonly followed for loss assessment, too, are outmoded, cumbersome and time-consuming. Worse still, these are aimed largely at seeking relief from the Centre rather than accurately measuring the devastation suffered by people to facilitate timely redress. Crop cutting experiments often present a misleading picture of the actual losses as these take a large contiguous area, usually an administrative block, as the unit for assessment whereas the actual damage normally varies from farm to farm.

The situation, however, can be redeemed. The use of satellite-based systems can provide a far more credible and real-time forewarning about impending perils as well as help in the subsequent appraisal of the damage. Several low orbiting geostationary satellites, even if meant primarily for communication and meteorology, and earth observatory satellites can contribute handsomely to disaster management at various levels - preparedness, prevention and relief. But the mechanisms to make effective use of their output need to be fine-tuned.

In this regard, a couple of new technology-driven initiatives in the offing seem well-conceived though their impact may take time to show up. One is the proposal by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to expand its operations and predict the exact amount of rain over a localised area at least four to six hours in advance. If proven reliable - and that is a big if - such a forecast can help civic authorities deal with sudden flooding of cities as witnessed recently in Pune, Bengaluru and Gurgaon and in Chennai and Mumbai in the past. The other notable plan is to develop indigenous drones, which would be able to generate individual farm-specific information on crop damage, to provide timely relief assistance and settle insurance claims.

But, several more fundamental and less technical aspects still need attention. For instance, the norms for determining the eligibility for disaster relief assistance, which were improved last year, are still riddled with flaws. The threshold of crop damage to make a farmer eligible for compensation has been reduced from the earlier 50 per cent to 33 per cent. Yet, for some inexplicable reasons, the assessment unit remains the administrative block. Similarly, the rate of compensation is still at just 50 per cent, although it was a measly two to five per cent of the actual losses earlier.

All in all, the systems and technologies are still far from adequate to help the affected people get back on their feet. Besides, the damage to livestock and agricultural assets like farm machinery and irrigation infrastructure are usually not taken into account. Such losses are often more hurtful, and take longer to recoup from, than the damage to the crops. As such, much more still needs to be done if India wants to upgrade its disaster-management and relief-dispensation systems with the use of technology. Otherwise, the affected people, especially farmers, would continue to struggle to reclaim their means of livelihood.