With global food security alarm bells growing louder, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday, October 29, 2026, highlighted that the latest instalment of the PM KISAN scheme will directly empower over 18 lakh farmers in Assam — a signal that India's agricultural safety net is holding, even as the world braces for a foodgrain crunch.

A direct transfer to 18 lakh+ Assam farming households

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM KISAN), launched nationwide in February 2019, provides eligible landholding farmer families a direct income support of Rs 6,000 per year, disbursed in instalments. Sarma stated that the latest tranche will 'empower 18 lakh+ farmers in Assam and strengthen their livelihoods and farming activities.' For a northeastern state where smallholder agriculture underpins millions of rural livelihoods, that transfer is not a statistic — it is seed money, it is a fertiliser bill, it is a buffer against a bad harvest.

India's farm-first response to a global foodgrain scare

Sarma framed the disbursement explicitly against a world 'preparing for a foodgrain crisis' — an acknowledgement that supply-chain disruptions, climate stress, and geopolitical volatility are reshaping food economics globally. India's counter-strategy, he argued, rests on building a 'resilient and vibrant farm ecosystem' through continuous, direct state support. PM KISAN sits at the centre of that architecture alongside procurement guarantees and agricultural credit schemes that successive central governments have layered onto the sector over the past decade.

Assam's farming population — spread across the Brahmaputra valley's paddy belts, the tea-garden fringes, and the hill districts — is acutely exposed to both climate volatility and price fluctuations. A reliable cash injection at the start of each agricultural cycle helps insulate farmers from having to distress-sell crops or take on high-interest informal credit.

Northeast agriculture and the NEDA-BJP policy alignment

As the convenor of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), Sarma has consistently positioned northeastern states as active participants in central welfare delivery — not passive recipients. Flagging a flagship central scheme's reach in Assam carries a dual message: it signals administrative efficiency in beneficiary identification and direct benefit transfers, and it reinforces the alignment between state and central governments in rolling out pro-farmer policy. Watch for state-level data releases on actual disbursement figures and any announcement of enhanced beneficiary coverage in subsequent instalments.