Context: The Odisha government’s much-hyped Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) scheme has gone haywire. The authorities are now facing a gigantic task of removing bogus beneficiaries who have already availed of the benefits.

Issues:

1. A total of 51 lakh cultivators, loanee and non-loanee farmers, sharecroppers and landless agricultural labourers have been provided with financial assistance under the scheme so far.
2. The authorities have now found out that all beneficiaries were not entitled to the benefits under the scheme and have asked the ineligible people to refund the money.
3. More than one member of a family have managed to get assistance.
4. In a majority of blocks, the number of applicants have outnumbered the number of ration card-holding families.

Key features of Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation or KALIA Scheme:

1. Involves payments to encourage cultivation and associated activities.
2. Primary targetsare small farmers, cultivators and landless agricultural labourers.
3. All farmers will be provided Rs 10,000 per family as assistance for cultivation.
4. Each family will get Rs 5,000 separately in the kharif and rabi seasons, for five cropping seasons between 2018-19 and 2021-22.
5. Targets 10 lakh landless households, and specifically SC and ST families. They will be supported with a unit cost of Rs 12,500 for activities like goat rearing, mushroom cultivation, beekeeping, poultry farming and fishery.
6. Exception: A critical trade, dairy production, has deliberately been kept out because keeping a cow is more expensive, while milk production needs to have a collection route or agency that processes and refines this low shelf-life product.
7. It will assist the elderly, sick and differently-abled populationwho are unable to take up cultivation, by providing Rs 10,000 per household per year.
8. The scheme includes a life insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh and additional personal accident coverageof the same amount for 57 lakh households.
9. Crop loans up to Rs 50,000 are interest-free.
10. This is also going to be an area-specific schemein the sense that an input support for a particular trade, say mushroom cultivation, will be provided if it is prevalent throughout that locality so that there is aggregation of produce.

How different will KALIA be from a loan waiver?

1. Unlike a loan waiver, (through which) banks appease a few farmers, KALIA’s main targets are rural activities as a whole.
2. It will support farming on a small scale, sharecropping, fishing, animal herding, which are not covered under bank loans, but are caught in debt traps set up by local moneylenders.
3. Also, a farm loan waiver will reduce credit available to farmers in the long term, while income support can be used to make a repayment or at least activate a bank account which can then receive a loan.”