The govt may make PM's crop insurance scheme voluntary and that may kill it

The proposal to make PMFBY voluntary was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's 2019 election manifesto. Why is the government proposing to jettison the scheme?

Simran Sandhu in Kurukshetra, Haryana, alternates between growing paddy and wheat in the kharif and rabi seasons. Like thousands of others, he borrowed from a local bank to buy seeds, fertiliser and other inputs and was enrolled compulsorily in the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the signature insurance scheme the Narendra Modi government launched in 2016 as part of its farm-revival policy package.

The premiums were auto-deducted from Sandhu’s bank account starting July 10. Then unseasonal rains damaged over a third of his paddy crop. But Sandhu could not recoup his losses because a state government’s circular on PMFBY