Health Insurance as Social Innovation for Farmers in Cooperatives: Lessons from Yeshasvini in Karnataka, India

Abstract

Health insurance (called as Yeshasvini) was introduced for members of cooperative societies in Karnataka, India, to address the problem of high and mounting healthcare expenditure incurred by the poor, leading to poverty and vulnerability among them. Yeshasvini was a new idea introduced to meet unmet needs to reach social goals and promote members’ welfare. This chapter examines whether Yeshasvini was implemented as social innovation by addressing the following questions. What has been the process adopted in providing awareness on Yeshasvini? What is the level of awareness among farmer beneficiaries? What are the levels of enrolment across the socio-economic groups? What is the extent to which the health insurance benefits are utilised by farmers from cooperatives? How did the utilisation pattern influence the welfare of farmers? What lessons can be learnt from this social innovation by cooperatives? These questions are answered in this chapter with the help of primary data collected from 552 sample households from 60 villages in three Karnataka districts. It is argued that Yeshasvini as a social innovation met the member needs to some extent; but, its success would have been more if there are effective alliances with the other local institutions such as community-based organisations and local government in the implementation.