An evaluation of the crop insurance programme in India through the multi-peril yieldbased National Agricultural Insurance Scheme reveals that while it has done well on equity grounds, the coverage and indemnity payments are biased towards a few regions and crops, and there are delays in settlement of claims. And while the emergence of weather-based insurance as an alternative has addressed several limitations of traditional insurance, it is faced by challenges of a different kind. Both these forms of insurance must thus be looked upon as complementary to each other in order to evolve an efficient mechanism for dealing with natural disaster risks in agriculture.