Amar Fasal Amar Gola

What is Amar Fasal Amar Gola?

Amar Fasal Amar Gola is a West Bengal scheme that pays a small or marginal farmer to build a storehouse on his own land. The Bengali name translates as "my crop, my storehouse", a gola being the traditional on-farm granary in which a Bengali farm family keeps its harvest.

The scheme was launched as a pilot initiative by the Government of West Bengal, paired with a companion component called Amar Fasal Amar Gari which subsidises a rickshaw van for carrying produce to market. The two were designed together and are usually announced in the same breath, because they address the two halves of the same problem: a farmer who can neither store his crop nor move it has no choice about when or where he sells it.

That lack of choice is the whole point. A small farmer without storage must sell at harvest, when every other farmer in the district is also selling and the price is at its floor. A gola buys him the ability to wait. The Agricultural Marketing Department's framing of the scheme is squarely about improving storage and marketing capability rather than about raising yield.

How much does Amar Fasal Amar Gola pay?

The amount is set by the type of structure built, not by the size of the holding. A farmer with one acre and a farmer with three acres building the same improved gola receive the same Rs 12,000.

The fivefold gap between the basic structure at Rs 5,000 and the onion store at Rs 25,000 reflects real construction cost rather than any preference for onion growers. Onion cannot be piled in a closed granary. It needs a raised floor, cross-ventilation and shade, and the structure that provides all three costs several times what a simple grain store costs. Onion is also the crop that punishes bad storage fastest, losing weight steadily and rotting in bulk once moisture gets in.

Who is eligible for Amar Fasal Amar Gola?

You can be selected if:

• You are a small or marginal farmer in West Bengal. The pilot was aimed at the state's roughly 24 lakh small and marginal farmers.
• You hold cultivable land in your own name, on which the storehouse will be built.
• You have a bank account, preferably one linked to your Kisan Credit Card, since that is the payment channel used.

You are not eligible if:

• You hold no recorded cultivable land. The subsidy is tied to a structure on the farm family's own holding, so sharecroppers and agricultural labourers without land records cannot apply.
• You are a large landholder. The scheme is directed at the small and marginal category.
• You are not a resident farmer of West Bengal.
• You want to build commercial warehousing for trading or for storing other people's produce. This is on-farm storage for a farm family's own crop.
• You have already drawn the subsidy for the same structure. It is one-time construction support.

One number deserves emphasis before a farmer plans around this scheme. The pilot targeted about 10,000 farmers out of some 24 lakh, a coverage of well under one per cent. Eligibility and selection are very different things here, and no farmer should begin construction on the assumption that the subsidy will follow.

How to apply for Amar Fasal Amar Gola

1. Go to your block agriculture office and ask whether Amar Fasal Amar Gola selection is open for the current year in your block. Availability varies, because the scheme was launched as a pilot with a fixed target.
2. State which structure you intend to build: basic, improved, or a specialised onion store, since this determines whether you are applying for Rs 5,000, Rs 12,000 or Rs 25,000.
3. Submit your land record — parcha, khatian or record of right, with identity proof, residence proof and a copy of your bank passbook. Give your Kisan Credit Card linked account details if you hold a KCC, as that is the route funds travel.
4. Allow field verification. An officer inspects the holding and the proposed site for the gola before selection is confirmed.
5. Build the structure once you are selected, and produce the evidence of construction that the block or district office asks for.
6. Receive the subsidy by direct bank transfer into your KCC-linked account.

The district Agricultural Marketing office is the escalation point if the block office cannot tell you whether the scheme is currently running.

Why applications fail

• No land record in the applicant's own name, which is the most common disqualifier and the one that cannot be worked around.
• Bank account not linked to the Kisan Credit Card, or a dormant account, so the direct transfer fails even after sanction.
• Name mismatch between the land record, the Aadhaar and the bank account.
• Claiming the onion storage rate for an ordinary grain store. The Rs 25,000 component requires a structure actually built to onion storage specification, and field verification checks this.
• Target exhausted for the year. Given a pilot target of about 10,000 farmers, a correct application can simply arrive after the block's allocation is used up. This is a rejection to re-apply against, not to appeal.

Where to raise a grievance

• The block agriculture office, which receives applications and conducts field verification.
• The district Agricultural Marketing office.
• The Agricultural Marketing Department, Government of West Bengal, at state level.

Application is free. No agent can charge a farmer for inclusion in the beneficiary list, and no official will ask for a payment to sanction a gola.

A note on current status

Amar Fasal Amar Gola was announced as a pilot with a target of about 10,000 farmers, and West Bengal has not published a detailed current-year operational circular for it in the public domain. The subsidy amounts recorded here: Rs 5,000, Rs 12,000 and Rs 25,000 to are the figures published when the scheme was introduced. A farmer should confirm at the block agriculture office that selection is actually open in the current season before committing money to construction on the expectation of this subsidy.

How to check your application status

Amar Fasal Amar Gola runs offline through the block agriculture office and the district Agricultural Marketing office, and West Bengal has not put an online tracker for this pilot in the public domain. There is no application ID or portal login to check here, so following up means going back to the office that took the paperwork.

• Visit the block agriculture office where you submitted your land record and bank details, and ask against the date you applied whether your name is on the current selection list for the block's target.
• Ask specifically about the block's allocation for the year, not just whether your file has been received. Because the pilot works against a fixed target of about 10,000 farmers statewide, an application can be complete and still be waiting behind an exhausted block quota, which is a different status from rejected.
• Confirm whether field verification has happened. Selection is usually confirmed only after an officer visits the holding and the proposed site for the gola, so an application still shows as pending if that visit has not taken place yet.
• Escalate to the district Agricultural Marketing office if the block office cannot give you a clear answer or if weeks have passed with no field visit scheduled. The district office holds the overall allocation and selection record for the scheme.
• Check your bank account directly once you are told you have been selected. Since the subsidy is paid by direct transfer to the Kisan Credit Card linked account, a credited amount is the clearest confirmation that approval is final, more reliable than any verbal update from the office.
• Keep your acknowledgement or receipt from the day you submitted your documents. Since there is no digital tracking number, this paper record is what the block office will ask for to pull up your file when you follow up.

There is no state helpline number published for this scheme, so the block agriculture office and the district Agricultural Marketing office remain the only two points of contact for a status update.