Discuss how Digital Public Infrastructure in agriculture can improve the delivery of credit, insurance and MSP, while highlighting the risks of exclusion for tenant farmers.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in agriculture centres on AgriStack, part of the Digital Agriculture Mission. It gives each farmer a verified, Aadhaar-like Farmer ID ("Kisan ki Pehchaan") linked to land, crop and scheme data [2]. With 11 crore IDs created by October 2026 [1], it can change how benefits are delivered. But it reaches only those farmers whom the land record recognises.

How DPI improves delivery

• Credit: Verified land and crop data ends repeated document checks for Kisan Credit Card loans, which speeds up formal credit [1].
• Insurance: The plot-level Digital Crop Survey and geo-referenced village maps [2] make PMFBY claim assessment more transparent. Payouts go directly into bank accounts [1].
• MSP: Procurement linked to the Farmer ID aims to remove middlemen, so farmers get the full value of their produce [1].
• Plugging leakages: CAG found PM-KISAN payments going to ineligible people because land records were weakly verified [4]. A verified, single registry targets exactly this failure.
• Ease of access: One ID replaces repeated paperwork across schemes, in line with "Minimum Government, Maximum Governance" [1].

Risks of exclusion for tenant farmers

• Tied to land records: The registry mainly covers landholding farmers. A cultivator whose name is missing from the land record has no normal route to an ID [3].
• Inclusion is optional: The software can enrol tenants and lessees, but each State decides according to its own tenancy policy [3]. So a tenant may be enrolled in one State and left out in the next.
• Informal leases: Restrictive leasing laws push owners and tenants into oral leases. Maharashtra's own 2017 Bill admitted this denied tenants their benefits [7]. With no written lease, the registry has no document to verify.
• Benefits reach the wrong person: The tenant bears the crop loss, but KCC loans and PMFBY claims may go to the absentee owner who holds the ID.
• Reform gap: NITI Aayog's Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act, 2016 recognises tenants so that they can get institutional credit [5]. Yet by 2017 only Madhya Pradesh had adopted it [6].

AgriStack can make credit, insurance and MSP delivery faster, cleaner and more transparent, but it can only be as fair as the land records beneath it. States should pass leasing laws modelled on the 2016 Model Act [5], make tenant enrolment compulsory rather than optional, and update land records alongside the rollout. MoA&FW should also publish State-wise figures on tenant enrolment. Then DPI will serve the actual tiller, advancing SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and the Article 38 goal of social and economic justice.