Just days before Diwali, Prime Minister Narendra Modi disbursed the 24th instalment of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme on Friday, 30 October 2026, transferring over ₹18,690 crore directly into the bank accounts of 9.34 crore farmer families — timing the release to coincide with the festive season and the start of rabi sowing. Union Home Minister Amit Shah hailed the disbursement as a Diwali gift to the country's annadatas (food providers).

₹4.47 lakh crore and counting: PM-KISAN's seven-year arc

Launched in February 2019, PM-KISAN was designed as a straightforward proposition: deposit ₹6,000 a year — in three equal instalments — directly into the accounts of eligible landholding farmer families, bypassing every intermediary. Friday's disbursement pushes the scheme's cumulative payout past ₹4.47 lakh crore, cementing its standing as one of the world's largest Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programmes.

Of that total, ₹1.06 lakh crore has flowed exclusively to women beneficiaries — a figure Home Minister Shah underscored to highlight the scheme's gender reach. The instalment's timing is deliberate: rabi sowing begins in October-November, and the cash infusion is intended to help farmers purchase seeds, fertilisers, and equipment at the season's critical opening window.

Why Banaskantha — and what else Modi unveiled there

Modi chose Banaskantha district in northern Gujarat as the launch venue — a predominantly agrarian district known for dairy farming and horticulture. Beyond the PM-KISAN transfer, he inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of development projects worth over ₹14,000 crore in the district.

The headline addition was the India Govansh Breeding and Research Centre, a new facility dedicated to indigenous cattle breeding and bovine research, which Modi formally dedicated to the nation. The centre underlines the government's parallel push to upgrade indigenous cattle genetics alongside conventional farm-income support.

DBT as policy architecture — not just welfare delivery

PM-KISAN's scale makes it a reference point for direct-transfer design globally. By eliminating leakage through the account-linked Aadhaar-authenticated pipeline, the government has argued the scheme delivers a higher effective value per rupee than input subsidies. Critics have noted the flat ₹6,000 annual ceiling has not been revised since 2019, and with input costs rising, the real value of the transfer has eroded — a debate that resurfaces with each new instalment.

Shah's post frames the disbursement in the language of festivity and agricultural seasonality — 'tyoharon ke is mausam mein' (in this festive season) — a framing the BJP has consistently used to connect welfare delivery to cultural moments and build rural political goodwill ahead of state election cycles.