Availability of subsidised fertilisers to the farmers is inevitable to sustain agricultural growth and to promote balanced nutrient application, more so, fertiliser subsidy would continue considering economic condition of the farmers. Ab initio, for the sake of convenience, subsidy is being routed through manufacturers/importers till date. Many issues have cropped up during the tenure of the present system, viz., liquidity crisis of industry due to repeated huge subsidy outstanding, leakage of fertiliser for non-agricultural use, indiscriminate and imbalanced use of fertilisers, uniform subsidised rates irrespective of size of land holding etc. Time is ripe enough to re-orient current policy of fertiliser subsidy disbursement with focus to pay it directly to the intended beneficiary farmers. Direct benefit transfer (DBT) is also the part of core policy of the present Government. In view of policy of DBT, Department of Fertilizers (DOF) has taken initiative in this direction for tracking the fertiliser movement up to the retailers and ultimately to the farmers by implementing Mobile Based Fertiliser Monitoring System (mFMS). However, final phases of mFMS are kept on hold sighting problems in the identification of farmers. Today, in the wake of digitisation of land records, issue of Kisan Credit Cards, bank accounts under Jan Dhan Yojana/ Rupay Card / Aadhaar Card, it is quite possible to identify the farmers and implement DBT with the support of IT infrastructure. This paper covers the review of present system of subsidy disbursement and prospective model for direct fertiliser subsidy to the farmers.
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