Source: Business Standard
Context: The Union Cabinet’s decision to extend PM-KISAN for five years from 2026-27 to 2030-31 is an expected continuation of a programme providing annual income support to farmers. The editorial argues the extension is an opportunity to reorient the scheme — specifically, to extend it to tenant and landless farmers and to use its architecture to reform the fertiliser subsidy.
PM-KISAN — Current Position
- Provides ₹6,000 annually to eligible farmers in three instalments.
- Uses Aadhaar authentication and digital verification.
- Around 95 million farmers have benefited.
- The scheme has been extended for five years from 2026-27 to 2030-31.
- The annual support has remained at ₹6,000 since the scheme began.
Key Issue — Tenant Farmers
PM-KISAN primarily covers land-owning farmers, with eligibility linked to land records.
However:
- India has a large number of tenant farmers and landless cultivators.
- Tenant farmers are vulnerable to rising input costs and climate-related risks.
- They often have limited access to institutional credit and government support.
- Excluding them creates a gap between land ownership and actual cultivation.
Suggested solution: State-level verification can be used to identify genuine cultivators and extend support to eligible tenant farmers.
Linking Fertiliser Subsidy with PM-KISAN
The editorial proposes using PM-KISAN’s existing JAM and DBT infrastructure for fertiliser subsidy delivery.
Under the proposed approach:
- Fertiliser requirements could be estimated based on landholding and crop patterns.
- Subsidy could be transferred directly to farmers.
- This could reduce dependence on the current system of routing subsidies through fertiliser producers.
- Better targeting could reduce leakages and misuse.
- It could also address the excessive use of subsidised urea.
