The NDA government brought a new scheme the Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) that became operational from 1st December 2018. It aimed to provide small and marginal farmers (SMFs) financial assistance to procure various inputs to ‘ensure proper crop health and appropriate yields’. It also aimed to protect these farmers from middlemen and moneylenders. SMFs were defined as the farmer families who collectively own cultivable land upto 2 hectares. According to the Agricultural Census (2015), the small and marginal holdings if taken together constituted around 13.78 crores (1378 lakhs) that is 86.08 percent of the total holdings in 2015-16.
What the PM-KISAN Scheme is?
The PM-KISAN scheme is supposed to provide a payment of Rs. 6000 per year to SMFs in their Aadhar linked bank accounts in three equal instalments of Rs. 2000 each in every four months. For the households who were not having Aadhar linked bank accounts, they were supposed to provide alternate prescribed documents for identity verification to get the benefit of the first instalment under the scheme. But, for subsequent payment of instalments, Aadhar linked bank account was made compulsory.For the year 2018-19, the government of India allocated 20 thousand crores and for the year 2019-20, an allocation of 75 thousand croreswere made to run the PM-KISAN scheme.
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