The Village Lottery: A Study of Index Based Agricultural Insurance in Tamil Nadu and the Reshaping of Farmer Vulnarability

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honours B.A. International Development Studies (Co-op) Specialist. Presented to Professor Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Professor Ryan Isakson, University of Toronto Scarborough.Index Based Agricultural Insurance (IBAI) is being promoted as the ultimate fix to address the risk faced by farmers in the current context of climate change. India is said to have one of the largest weather-index insurance markets amongst developing countries. However, the success of the product has been questioned because of the low levels of effective demand seen from farmers. Certain studies have suggested that this problem is a result of financial illiteracy amongst farmers. However, these papers have left out the voices of farmers. As such, this paper critically evaluates that claim by incorporating and analyzing farmers’ perceptions and experiences with IBAI in the state of Tamil Nadu. The study consists of two case studies in the districts of Nagapattinam and Tirunelveli, where farmers who had been part of IBAI were interviewed. The study argues that their experiences situate the product within the process of roll-out neo-liberalization. As such, instead of addressing the risk faced by farmers, IBAI introduces and reproduces dimensions of vulnerability by entrenching processes of agrarian financialization, commodification, and modernization