Dr. Shibendu S. Ray, Director of the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, delivered a talk on the "Role of Remote Sensing in Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana" under the Institute Lecture Series of the TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERI SAS), on 17th February 2021.    

At MNCFC, Dr. Ray leads a team of nearly 50 scientific/technical personnel for operationalisation of remote sensing applications in agriculture, in various domains such as crop forecasting, drought assessment, crop insurance, agricultural development, etc.  

The MNCFC has been a major technology provider to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the Government of India’s flagship crop insurance scheme, launched in 2016. It is globally the third-largest crop insurance programme, after the US and China.   

 Remote sensing is being used for crop area discrepancy assessment, yield dispute resolution, loss assessment, crop cutting experiment planning (smart sampling), insurance rate-making, seasonality assessment, etc.