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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Launched to make the claims process under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana easier, the glitch-prone app has actually made farmers’ lives a lot more difficult.
Editor's note: When a hailstorm destroyed nearly half the standing wheat crop on R’s farm in Madhya Pradesh this March, he turned to an app on his phone for help. The app, called Crop Insurance, was launched in December 2018 by the government to facilitate filing of claims for crop loss under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, or PMFBY, the flagship crop insurance scheme that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016. Developed as part of the government’s Digital India push, the app is one of the primary ways in which farmers can report crop loss. And, clearly happy with its functioning over the last four years, the government touts it as a “technological advancement in agriculture” that has “simplified and speed up [sic] the process of getting claims for farmers”. Tweets from government handles claiming farmers can instantly avail crop insurance through the app. The reality, however, is very different. R, who owns a 15-acre farm in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and has paid crop insurance premiums for four years, tried registering his claim for Rs 2 lakh in …
India’s leading tech hardware distribution company is making the most of the unprecedented rise in global prices of laptops and other tech hardware. There’s just one problem.
How well rural consumption is doing is subjective. What isn’t subjective is how growing indebtedness, combined with stagnant income growth, is creating a tinderbox for households, banks and consumer companies that no one is talking about.
Even though the government of India did a U-turn on the mandatory pre-installation of the anti-fraud app on all mobile phones sold or imported in the country, the larger problem of petty cybercrime remains grim.
