PM Kisan Samman Nidhi: Evaluating Its Role in Supporting Farmers and Reducing Rural Distress

The heart of India, where soil smells of culture, monsoon determines fortune, and every crop symbolizes life; lives the farmer whose fate hangs ever hanging by the thread oscillating between hope and helplessness. Over the last two decades, the tragic picture of farmer suicide has become more and more dreadful. Especially in states like Maharashtra, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh. Among the countless efforts put in place by the government to ease their situation a bit, one such flagship initiative stands as Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, promising direct financial support to the farmers. Its structured payment model, with a simplified onboarding process, requires farmers to complete eKYC before getting the benefit out of it. But, the question here remains- Can Rs. 6000 a year uproot poverty among farmers? Can it prevent farmer suicides? At the least, is it even sufficient to feed their family?

This blog will explore the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi in a way to uncover its ground reality and evaluate its potential of helping farmers, curb suicides, to say the least.

Understanding PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana

In December 2018, our honorable Prime Minister launched Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), a scheme that provides eligible farmers some of Rs. 6000/- over the year in three instalments. The objective was to provide small financial support to small and marginal farmers to help them manage expenses related to daily household and investment towards their fields, like fertilizers, seeds, etc.

Eligibility is simple; it includes farmer families to own cultivable land and have their bank accounts linked with an Aadhaar card. As per the latest update July 2025 expected to be the PM Kisan 20th installment date. This new deadline was provided so farmers can have enough time to complete their PM Kisan KYC or PM Kisan eKYC, and payment can go through uninterrupted.

Now going a level deeper, let’s understand the mixed bag of realities beneath this well-intended program.

The Pros: How PM-KISAN Is Making a Difference

1. Direct Financial Support

For the first time, 11 Crore farmer families received direct financial aid, cutting through the bureaucratic red tape and middlemen. It was like something is better than nothing and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when survival was a question for many farmer families.

2. Promotion of Financial Inclusion

The primary requirement for receiving PM-KISAN support is to get your Aadhaar verified and link it with your bank account. It promoted more opening of bank accounts among farmers and was a stepping stone towards broader financial inclusion.

3. Psychological Assurance

“Sarkar humein bhooli nahi hai,” these were the words of a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, one among the many interviewed across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Rs. 2000/- may be a modest amount, but it gives our farmer a sense of assurance that while making policies government keeps their situation under consideration.

4. Emergency Relief Support

During sowing and harvesting season, as the amount reaches the farmer, it adds up to some support while paying off the urgent dues or buying seeds, at least a small buffer during the stress season.

The Cons: While it’s Still Not Enough

1. Insufficient Amount

Rs. 6000/-, which translates to Rs. 500/- per month, to be real is never enough for a farmer to: Buy seeds for one-acre land, educate one child, feed his family even for a week. The biggest reason for farmer poverty is high input costs, while output and, to make it worse, we have erratic weather, harassment, and poor insurance policy implementation. Keeping that in mind, PM-Kisan is more like a symbolic gesture than a real help.

2. Exclusion Errors and Bureaucratic Hurdles

Many farmers, due to some technical errors like issues with KYC and mismatch in land records, haven’t received the benefits of PM-KISAN yet. These farmers are often the sharecroppers and tenant farmers who one informal land holdings and come under the poorest strata.

3. No link to Market Price or Yield

The scheme does not consider to drop in crop prices and actual yield. This scheme has no risk sharing mechanism, so to say, as the farmer who loses the entire crop due to bad weather receives the same amount of Rs. 2000, for that season, as the one with a successful harvest.

4. Not a Long-Term Solution

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime.

PM-KISAN is a welfare scheme, not a structural reform to eradicate poverty among farmers. Due to a lack of MSP enforcement, high debt dependency on informal lenders, poor irrigation, or market exploitation by middlemen, the government needs to go a few levels deeper and come up with a solution to prevent farmer suicide and improve their living conditions.

Can PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Curb Farmer Suicides?

10,000 farmer suicides are recorded annually in India. The key reasons are: a large amount of debt, crop failure, and socio-economic burden. Eliminating it with the help of PM-KISAN is out of the question when it can barely delay it.

A 39-year-old farmer from Vidarbha, Maharashtra owned a land of 1.5 Acres. Despite receiving PM-KISAN every year, he committed suicide as he was unable to pay the informal loan of Rs. 1.2 Lakh. That was taken when the cotton prices crashed. The sum of Rs. 6000 was used for buying fertilizers, but it couldn’t cover even a small fraction of his loan, and he hanged himself in August 2023. His widow mentioned, “Government hamesha thoda deti hai, par kabhi poora sahara nahi ban pati.”

So yes, for most farmers, PM-KISAN is like offering a glass of water to someone trapped in fire.

Conclusion: Symbolic Relief, Not Structural Reform

PM-KISAN is indeed a small-scale help and relatively the most effective implementation of the direct support scheme. The only challenge is that the strata it aims to serve are the ones suffering the most, and this scheme, as well-intended as it is, can give hope but not healing. Instead of small handouts, they need a larger sum and strengthening of the existing facilities in place, like MSP, crop insurance, mental health programs, etc.