Cabinet Extends PM-KISAN Through 2030-31 with ₹3.15 Lakh Crore Outlay

The Union Cabinet on Friday gave its approval to extend the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) for a fresh five-year cycle spanning 2026-27 to 2030-31, sanctioning a financial commitment of ₹3.15 lakh crore. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The structure of the scheme remains unchanged: eligible landholding farmer families will receive ₹6,000 per year, disbursed in three equal instalments of ₹2,000 each, credited directly into beneficiary bank accounts through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mechanism. The government stated that the extension underscores its commitment to bolstering farmer incomes and enabling timely investment in agricultural inputs including seeds, fertilisers, irrigation, and farm machinery.

Launched in February 2019, PM-KISAN has built a substantial disbursement record over six years. The government says cumulative transfers have crossed ₹4.47 lakh crore across 23 instalments, making it one of the largest direct-benefit programmes in Indian history.

The 23rd instalment alone reached more than 9.49 crore farmers, with disbursements totalling over ₹18,984 crore. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the scheme served as a critical rural safety net, with more than ₹1.71 lakh crore channelled to farmers during that period.

Women farmers have emerged as a notable beneficiary segment. The government reports that more than ₹1.06 lakh crore has been transferred specifically to women farmers under the programme, with nearly one in every four beneficiaries being a woman — a figure likely to attract greater policy focus in the extended phase.

The Cabinet approval was accompanied by the government citing an independent evaluation by the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO) of NITI Aayog, which examined how beneficiaries utilise the income support.

Key findings from the evaluation:

• More than 92% of beneficiaries reported directing the assistance towards agricultural activities and investment
• Around 85% said PM-KISAN had contributed to an improvement in their agricultural income and had reduced their reliance on informal credit sources

These numbers matter because they go to the heart of a persistent policy debate: whether cash-transfer programmes translate into productive investment or merely supplement consumption. The DMEO data suggests PM-KISAN's design — modest but regular transfers timed around the crop cycle — has encouraged farm-level capital deployment rather than pure consumption smoothing.

A defining feature of PM-KISAN is its technology backbone. Beneficiary identification and fund transfer rely on Aadhaar authentication and digital verification, with payments flowing exclusively through the DBT pipeline. The government has described the scheme as a model of transparent, technology-driven welfare delivery.

This architecture has helped minimise leakage and ghost beneficiaries — a persistent problem in earlier farm-support programmes — while creating a verifiable trail of transfers. For agri-policymakers, PM-KISAN's DBT framework has become a template that is being referenced in discussions around other rural and agricultural welfare interventions.

With the five-year extension locked in, PM-KISAN will remain the cornerstone of the Centre's farmer income-support architecture through the end of the decade. The government said it expects the extended scheme to improve farmers' capacity for timely input purchases, enhance productivity, and reduce agricultural risk — outcomes that collectively contribute to rural household financial stability.

The extension is explicitly framed within the government's broader Atmanirbhar Bharat and Viksit Bharat objectives, signalling that farm income support will be integral to India's development agenda through 2030-31. For commodity traders and agri-input businesses, the sustained ₹6,000 annual transfer to tens of crores of farm households is a demand-side certainty worth building into medium-term market projections.