The True Cost of Calamity
In the last week, India has witnessed one of the worst flood disasters in recent memory. Rivers overflowed, embankments broke, and relentless rains submerged villages and farmlands.
Punjab has faced its worst floods in nearly four decades; relentless rains submerged villages and farmlands. More than 1,400 villages were marooned, and over 3.7 lakh acres of standing crops were destroyed. At least 30 lives were lost, while thousands of families were displaced.
The statistics are sobering, but the human stories are heart breaking. A farmer whose 10 acres of paddy were submerged now faces debts he cannot repay. A dairy family lost two buffaloes to the floodwaters and with them their only steady income from milk sales. For rural households, livestock is more than an asset it is security, daily cash flow, and even pride. Losing cattle is like losing savings, insurance, and income all at once.
For farmers, the damage was beyond numbers. Their year’s effort paddy, maize, and vegetable crops were wiped out in days. Dairy farmers, too, suffered heavily - cattle drowned, fodder stocks were ruined, and milk production plummeted. For a state that is one of India’s largest producers of milk, this was not just an agricultural crisis but also a blow to daily household income and nutrition.
Across flood-hit regions, families are walking a financial tightrope, where despair threatens to overwhelm resilience.
The devastation has reminded India that farming and dairy business remain the riskiest professions in the country, and when disaster strikes, rural livelihoods are left exposed. This is where crop and livestock insurance become critical not a luxury, not an afterthought, but a necessity. This is why insurance matters. It is not just about financial compensation it is about protecting dignity, hope, and the courage to return to the fields and barns after disaster.
Erratic weather has become the new normal. Floods in Punjab, droughts in Maharashtra, hailstorms in Madhya Pradesh each season brings fresh risks. Insurance cushions both farmers and dairy households against nature’s unpredictability.
Nearly 40% of India’s workforce depends on agriculture and allied sectors. For many in Punjab, dairying supplements farming. When floods kill cattle or destroy fodder, it wipes out the family’s daily income. Insurance that covers both crops and livestock is essential to protect holistic livelihoods.
Punjab is India’s food bowl, but it is also a leading milk producer. When crops and cattle both fail, it affects not only farmers but also food prices and nutrition security nationwide.
Punjab, despite its agricultural prosperity, has revealed a troubling vulnerability. Many farmers were not adequately insured. Relief packages were announced, but ad hoc compensation is neither systematic nor sufficient.
The floods have also exposed another uncomfortable truth politics often comes before farmer protection. When the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was launched by the Modi government to shield farmers from crop losses, some state governments including Punjab refused to implement it. The AAP government in Punjab announced in 2023 that it would create its own crop insurance scheme. Two years later, no such scheme exists, and farmers remain uncovered. Similarly, earlier Congress governments had also opposed the central scheme and promised alternatives that never materialized.
Farmer unions which were active during the farm law agitation, also criticized crop insurance, portraying it as “corporate-driven.” This narrative deepened distrust, even though millions of farmers in other states benefited from PMFBY pay-outs. Beyond politics, pressure also came from middlemen and commission agents (aaddhee) who feared that structured crop insurance and reforms would reduce farmers’ dependency on them. The opposition to central schemes was less about farmer welfare and more about political positioning. Supporting a policy linked to the Modi government was seen as politically risky by AAP and other opposition groups.
But the price of these choices was paid not by politicians it was paid by farmers. The 2025 floods proved this painfully; had structured insurance been in place, pay-outs would already be flowing. Instead, farmers are left to wait for delayed surveys, partial relief, and uncertain compensation.
India has introduced multiple crop insurance schemes over the years from NAIS (National Agricultural Insurance Scheme) to Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). These have helped many farmers, but challenges remain, many farmers do not know how to enrol or claim.
Claims can take months, defeating the purpose. Some states have too many, the absence of reliable crop and livestock insurance meant waiting for delayed government surveys, patchy compensation, and pay-outs that covered only a fraction of their losses. Relief was uncertain, when what they needed was a guaranteed safety net.
Every farmer and dairy household must be included under a transparent, automatic insurance system. Satellites, drones, and AI-based weather and flood data can help assess crop loss, while livestock registries and digital cattle IDs can help process dairy claims faster
Insurance pay-outs for both crop and cattle loss should go directly into farmers’ bank accounts, eliminating middlemen. Coverage must be easy to understand, bilingual, and available at village level covering both fields and livestock.
Farmers and dairy families must be educated that insurance is protection, not a burden. Crop and livestock insurance are not simply about economic survival it is about dignity. A farmer who knows his family will not go hungry, even if fields are submerged or cattle lost, can face nature with resilience.
The Punjab floods of 2025 are a reminder that farmers deserve more than sympathy after disasters; they deserve resilience before disasters. Behind every drowned field and every lost buffalo is a family’s dream. Behind every lost harvest and failed milk supply is a nation’s food security.
India’s farmers and dairy families have fed the nation through droughts, famines, and revolutions in food production. It is now time for the nation to protect them with equal commitment.
Crop and livestock insurance must not remain policies on paper. They must become living shields systems farmers can trust when calamity strikes. The Punjab floods of 2025 speak a truth we cannot ignore, When we insure our farmers, we insure our future.
