IT Intervention in Agriculture
The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was launched by the Government of India to make all government services available to the citizens via all digital channels including electronic media. National e-Governance Plan NeGP was devised by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG). National e-Governance Plan NeGP consists of 27 “Mission Mode Projects” (MMPs) and 10 components to enable online accessibility of data. It was mainly envisaged to develop new applications to allow citizen access to government services through Common Service Centers; in order to reduce government costs and improve access to services.
UMANG is the most remarkable achievement under National e-Governance Plan NeGP. An all-in-one unified secure multi-channel multi-platform multi-lingual multi-service mobile app providing access to over 841 services through 127 departments of central and state government services over Android, iOS, and Windows. The app can be used to interact with any government or semi-government department at centre, state or local level in India. It is a one stop online solution for a plethora of offline services though a unified app. UMANG is actively being used by farmers to calculate crop insurance premium, access soil health cards and even registration and application for PMKVY Scheme.
MyGov is another laudable initiative that acts as a platform to engage citizens and enable them to participate in the country’s governance and development. MyGov is another innovative platform to build a communication channel for engagement between Citizens and Indian Government with the help of technology for development and growth of the country. It has partners like Google and received over 2 lakh registrations within 45 days of inception. Rural and agricultural development has been an integral subject of discussion on MyGov platform.
MyGov has been a convenient feedback and communication channel for the general public to voice their opinion to government bodies. This platform was used extensively to ask questions to be answered by the PM in his radio program ‘Mann ki Baat’. Key discussions on the platform are around digitization of agriculture and hi-tech smart farming techniques. Authorities have also been using this platform to increase adoption of apps like KisanSuvidha. It is a multilingual mobile application with over 3 lakh active users (as of 2016), providing information on areas like weather details, market price of farm products, agro advisory, Kisan Call center and others.
With an objective of dissemination of latest technology on agriculture to the farmers and developing an informed farmer community, Agriculture Resource Information Systems and Networking (AGRISNET) was established. It aims at creating a sustainable data bank of all Agricultural Inputs in the State containing entries for all relevant information pertaining to Agriculture and its related activities and to access the same through a secured Network. This initiative would help to network all Agricultural Offices up to Block level with the State Department of Agriculture for improving information access and to provide advisory services to the farming community through use of Information and Communication technology (ICT).
FocusAgritech’s Infotech’s Outlook: The Government through its projects has brought farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together by establishing online information for Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Horticulture and Fisheries departments. The citizens can put their queries online along with the photographs on the web and get the advice from the experts of concerned departments at the convenience of their homes. The success of these projects depends on the rate of adoption and degree of responsiveness of the concerned authorities to farmer’s queries. This is the opportunity area where private players can step in to collaborate for better featured products and utilise the data bank for developing cutting edge technology with the government departments.
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