With large parts of the country being declared drought-hit, the need for a safeguard against vagaries of nature is being felt like never before. The good news is that more than 1.4 lakh tribal poor farmers in Gujarat have got just that — a weather-based insurance (WBI) cover.

The tribal department in Gujarat has, for the first time, taken a WBI of Rs 60.3 crore from the Agriculture Insurance Company of India Ltd (AICIL) to cover the below poverty line farmers.

On offer to farmers of 12 states across the country, WBI, different from the traditional crop insurance, is a cover against bad weather conditions.

The Centre, through AICIL, floated the WBI scheme to safeguard and improve the coverage area of cash crops across the country in 2004. Since then, the AICIL has piloted the scheme in 12 states of India with an insured sum of over Rs 1,000 crore.

Earlier, the company provided only crop insurance. While crop insurance indemnifies the cultivator against shortfall in crop yield, the WBI scheme uses weather parameters as proxy for crop yields in compensating the cultivators for estimated crop losses.

“It is based on the fundamental that despite ensuring a good harvest, the weather conditions affect crop production. We provide insurance for the dry spell as well as excess rains in accordance with the contract which may be different for different locations,” said K N Rao, deputy general manager, AICIL, Delhi.

Payout structures are developed using weather triggers to compensate cultivators for the losses suffered by them. For instance, the AICIL’s Gujarat branch paid Rs 3.9 lakh in Mangrol taluka of Kutch for receiving less rains.

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