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Principal Sarathi VP & Principal 2026

Major Government Schemes — Explained

Twenty-plus flagship schemes taken one at a time — the problem each was built for, how it works, what it achieved, and the criticism an examiner expects you to know.

14 sections · English and Hindi

1. PM-KISAN — INCOME SUPPORT FOR FARMERS

① The problem

An Indian small farmer's biggest difficulty is not the size of his income but its timing. Money comes in a lump at harvest; expenses — seed, fertiliser, diesel, a child's school fee, a medical emergency — arrive all year. To bridge the gap, the farmer borrows, often from a moneylender at ruinous interest.

Government had long responded with subsidies on inputs and loan waivers. Both were criticised: subsidies leak and distort cropping choices, and a loan waiver rewards the defaulter while punishing the farmer who repaid.

PM-KISAN — Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi — was a change of instrument. Instead of subsidising the input or writing off the loan, give the farmer cash, directly, predictably, and let him decide.

② The design

Element How it works
Amount ₹6,000 a year, in three instalments of ₹2,000, every four months
Why three instalments It is timed to the crop cycle — money arrives before sowing, not after
Route Direct Benefit Transfer into an Aadhaar-seeded bank account
Who identifies beneficiaries The State or UT government identifies; the Centre pays
Unit The FAMILY, defined as husband, wife and minor children — not the individual. One family gets one payment
Conditions None. The farmer may spend it on anything

The exclusions matter as much as the inclusions. Institutional landholders; holders of constitutional posts; serving and retired Government employees (except Group D and multi-tasking staff); income-tax payers; professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers and chartered accountants; and pensioners drawing ₹10,000 a month or more are all kept out. The intent is to reach the small and marginal farmer.

③ The achievement

④ The criticism

  1. It is tied to land ownership, so it misses tenant farmers, sharecroppers and landless agricultural labourers — arguably the poorest people in rural India. A tenant who farms someone else's land gets nothing; the absentee owner gets the money.
  2. ₹6,000 a year is about ₹500 a month. Against the cost of cultivation it is a gesture, not a livelihood.
  3. Land records are poor and disputed in much of India, which delays or denies payments.
  4. Beneficiary numbers have fluctuated sharply — from over 10.4 crore to 8.1 crore and back — as the database was cleaned of ineligible entries, causing genuine hardship in the process.
  5. The e-KYC and Farmer ID requirements, though necessary to stop fraud, have excluded farmers without smartphones or Aadhaar-linked mobile numbers. Face Authentication e-KYC was introduced to address exactly this.

The balanced conclusion to write: PM-KISAN succeeded in proving that direct cash can reach nine crore people cheaply and transparently. Its limitation is not administrative but definitional — by choosing landholding as the criterion, it protected itself against fraud at the cost of excluding the landless.

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