Video Conference on “Innovations in NeGP-Agriculture”
Organized by Centre for Innovations in Public Systems (CIPS), Hyderabad with Technical Support from National Informatics Centre (NIC), Delhi on 9th April, 2015 from 10.30 AM to 01.00 PM
Chair Person: Shri D Ramakrishna, Senior Consultant, CIPS, Hyderabad Speakers: 1. Shri Harshvardhan Mirajkar Sr. Consultant, NeGPA, PMU Office of the Commissioner Agriculture Govt. of Maharashtra Mobile No: 09822273619 e-Mail: [email protected] 2. Dr. N. Anandaraja Assistant Professor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu Mobile No: 9443444383 Mail Id: [email protected] List of participating States and Locations: 1. Tamil Nadu: Coimbatore 2. Maharashtra: Pune-NDC 3. Karnataka: KA-ZP. Raichur, Gadag 4. Goa: NIC-Panjim 5. Uttarakhand: NIC-Dehradun 6. Tripura: Agartala 7. Chhattisgarh: Naya Raipur Studio-1 8. Jharkhand: Ranchi NIC2 9. West Bengal: NABANNA 10. Telangana: NIC-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Urban 11. Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal-EVCS 12. Jammu and Kashmir: Jammu-NIC-Sectt. 13. Kerala: Alappuzha, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Ernakulam, Kottayam, Kozhikode 14. Sikkim: Gangtok 15. Himachal Pradesh: Shimla 16. Meghalaya: Shillong 17. Haryana: Panchkula 18. Bihar: Patna-NIC 19. Arunachal Pradesh: AR-Itanagar-NIC About NeGP-Agriculture:
Date of commencement: Phase 1 has been completed during November 2010 to August 2012. Scheduled date of completion: 2014-15 Name of the Implementing Agency: Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India. Summary of NeGP-Agriculture: National e-Governance Plan-Agriculture (NeGP-A) aims to provide an integrated platform to the farmers for making informed decisions. The information is proposed to be delivered through various channels like internet, electronic media, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, Agri clinics, Common Service Centres mobile phones (broadcast, Interactive Voice Response System, Interactive Messaging using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and Voice Recognition),touch screens, etc. which enables easy access to information for farmers. The aim of Agriculture MMP is to consolidate the IT initiatives, in order to provide integrated services to the stakeholders. Over the years Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) has taken up several IT initiatives such as 1. AGMARKNET 2. SEEDNET 3. DACNET, etc. Similarly State/UTs have either developed or in the process of developing IT applications such as AGRISNET under various programmes of DAC. Such applications will be integrated with Central Agri Portal (CAP) and State Agri Portal envisaged under NeGP-A. The portals will have the options of providing online feedback for the stakeholders, which improves the transparency and effective monitoring. The objectives of this scheme are as follows:
In order to achieve the aforesaid vision, the department has also articulated key SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) objectives which need to be achieved through the Agriculture MMP. These objectives are
Improve access of farmers to timely and relevant information & services throughout crop- cycle o By providing multiple delivery channels to access information o By reducing time between generation and dissemination of information o By providing information to the farmer through a uniform platform Bringing farmer centricity & service orientation by providing location specific and up-to- date crop management related information in terms of: o Good Agriculture Practices (GAPs) - how many days, season specific, crop specific, location / zone specific o Packages of Practice (POPs) - How many days, season specific, crop specific, location / zone specific o Providing personalized advisory services Increasing effectiveness of government service delivery in o Certification and licensing related to Manufacturing and MARKETING through use of ICT o Providing easier and approachable channels for grievance registration and tracking More effective management of schemes of DAC through process redesign aimed at o Effective Monitoring of the Schemes (timeliness of implementation etc) o Reducing time required for data consolidation and reporting of schemes at all levels Enable private sector participation to benefit farmers by providing an integrated platform to promote value added services in o Extension o MARKETING (both input and output) o Post harvest & Storage
Components of NeGP-Agriculture: There are 12 Cluster of services and 78 components. Presently, 47 components have been made live these include web enabled delivery of services and mobile based interactive services of farmers. 7 States have been covered in the 1st year under 90:10 funding pattern. The 12 clusters are identified below: 1. Marketing Infrastructure 2. e-Certifications for imports and exports 3. Prices, arrivals and procurement points 4. Weather forecast and Agro-Met advisory 5. Crops, Machinery, Training and GAPs 6. Soil Health 7. Pesticides, Fertilizers and Seeds 8. Livestock Management 9. Drought Relief and Management 10. Irrigation Infrastructure 11. Fisheries 12. Monitoring of Schemes and Programmes
As part of the dissemination of information relating to the replication of innovative practices, CIPS has launched a major sensitization process through a series of Video Conferences (VCs). These VCs are aimed at ensuring the participation of different states with very little dislocation and by providing maximum coverage to officers as also field staff in different parts of the country. CIPS has been entrusted with a project titled “Capacity Building Programmes of Innovative Best Practices under Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) of State Governments and Govt. of India" by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India. As a part of the above project, CIPS has conducted a Video Conference (VC) on “Innovations in NeGP- Agriculture” from 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM on 9th April, 2015 (Thursday). The VC was focused to bring all the states together and to sensitize State Government Departments on the key benefits of e-Governance in Agriculture.
Objectives of the VC:
To provide a platform for cross-fertilization of ideas/innovative practices and to share the experience of States/UTs in the areas/usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for greater service delivery To appraise the participants about the latest ICT learning and e-Governance initiatives by Government of India State/UTs and also provide them the necessary insights in to the processes and technical aspects of these initiatives To establish networking forum between the experts/champions of these initiatives and to exchange and share the ideas/perspectives and development(s) in the area-from across the State/UTs Welcome address by Shri D Ramakrishna, IAS (Retd.), Senior Consultant, CIPS: Shri D Ramakrishna, IAS (Retd.), Senior Consultant, CIPS has set the tone with a welcome speech. He introduced Centre for Innovations in Public Systems (CIPS) to the participants and also introduced the project titled ‘Capacity Building Programmes of Innovative/Best Practices’ supported by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India (GoI), under the grant entitled “Capacity Building Programmes for Innovative/Best Practices for Mission Mode Project (MMPs) of State and Govt. of India” as part of the National e-Governance Plan. He suggested the States/UTs to look at the possible replication of the best practices in Agriculture in order to bring
good governance in the country.
1. e-Parwana, Maharashtra: Shri Harshvardhan Mirajkar, Sr. Consultant, NeGP-A, PMU, Office of the Commissioner Agriculture, Govt. of Maharashtra
Shri Harshvardhan Mirajkar has over 6 years experience in managing complex engagements in Project Management, Business Process Re- engineering, Market Research and Software Implementation.
He has worked with clients in IT, Manufacturing and Government domains across ERP implementation, Process Re-engineering, Software implementation and Project Management.
Some of his assignments include large scale IT implementations in key Government clients, Research reports on emerging markets for Indian IT/ITeS, Process Improvement for a Steel Manufacturer and implementation of Microsoft Ax HR module.
He has Cleared CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor) exam in June 2013, standing among the top 10% candidates
Specialties: Business Analysis Functional & technical process design Software implementation User Acceptance Testing, IT road-map & Go to market strategy Primary and secondary research Experience in working with mission critical government agencies
Pre-sales: Response to RFPs and EoIs Shri Harshvardhan Mirajkar introduced himself along with the senior officials belonging to Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra. The senior officials were 1. Shri. Vikas Deshmukh, Hon. Commissioner, Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra 2. Shri Vijay Deshpande, Direcor NIC 3. Shri Mukund Hardas, Dy Director (Project) and NeGPA State Nodal Officer,Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra He listed out the ICT projects that are being implemented by Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra for better service delivery. They are e-Thibak: Online system for application & processing of Micro irrigation subsidy e-Parwana: Licensing for Manufacture, Import, Distribution & Retailing of Seeds, Fertilizers and Pesticides Maharain: SMS based recording of daily rainfall from all Circles of Maharashtra Cropwatch: Information system for online reporting of week wise crop area sown during the season.
Horticulture Information System: Contains the details of Horticulture sown crops Horticulture Census: Census of Horticulture specific crops CROPSAP (Crop Pest Surveillance & Advisory Project): On the field Surveillance of pests and reporting over sms Soil Health Card: Decision support will be provided for farmers about crops and fertilizers suitable for their land Maha Krushi Sanchar CUG: Largest Mobile Phone User Group which has benefitted about 15 Lakh farmers under the scheme Agriculture Census: Census of Agriculture land holdings The above mentioned projects had won various awards and among these projects e-Parwana project has won maximum awards. The awards won by e-Parwana project are listed below:
Skoch Order of Merit 2013,2014, eLets PSU Award 2014 State eGov Certificate of Recognition, 2013 e-Maharashtra Jury Choice Award 2013 e-India Jury Choice Award 2012 Before briefing e-Parwana project, he explained about e-Thibak project. e-Thibak: e-Thibak is an Online Application to perform all administrative activities. Initially all the applications were manual at taluka level and there was no uniformity. After introducing the online system, they had maintained standard procedures for applying and obtaining subsidy. The cost of micro irrigation components have been standardized. Beneficiary data is made available in public domain. He described the solution saying before installation, the beneficiary’s data will be entered into the system. Hard copy from the farmer is accepted and data entry is made in the system. Based on this, the pre-sanction is granted. After installation, invoice will be generated in the system upon which spot verification will be done. In spot verification, taluka level officer goes and inspects whether the instrument has been installed properly. After this process, the subsidy is decided and the payment is made. The diagrammatic representation of the above process, is shown below:
Bill Invoice Entry Pre Installation Proposal Ack. Proposal Scrutiny Spot Verification Beneficiary Entry Application Entry Hard copy acknowledgement Scrutiny of applications Post Installation Quotation entry Grant of pre-sanction
Subsidy Fixation
Proposal Scrutiny Subsidy Payment Fixing of Subsidy Demand of Subsidy
He explained the Pre Vs. Post implementation of e-Thibak project:
Criteria Pre- eThibak Post eThibak Benefits
Application Multiple visits to dept. Online form Saving in time & for subsidy offices: submission money Online Supporting Realistic Application form document checklist application tracking Supporting Online application Reduction in documents tracking farmers’ visits to Application/subsi Dept. dy status
Farmer’s Dealers Standard rates of Well informed informatio Limited choic components, farmers n source Multiple sources available online Same rates across manufacturers Duplicate Fake/duplicate Each application is Subsidy saving in beneficiari beneficiaries, unique the tune of Rs 50 es leading to subsidy End-to-end tracking Cr. ‘leakage’ Re-application rejected based on fixed criteria
Transparen Beneficiary data Block wise list of Transparency cy provided only beneficiaries leading to public upon follow up available online trust with Dept e-Parwana: Before introducing e-Parwana, there was lot of burden on the Department in the process of licensing. There was no way to track how much revenue is getting generated by the way of accepting the fees. It was also felt that the implementation of Government Act’s was difficult. There was no way to monitor the quality of inputs produced. Also, there was no single source of information on the inputs. Because of the above challenges, the Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra has introduced e-Parwana. He listed out the key objectives of the project mentioned below:
Effective and useful implementation of Acts, Rules and Orders Uniform & convenient process across the State Effective monitoring and reporting Expediting license granting process Reliable product information for farmers Validation of license anytime Advance notice for license renewal Description of e-Parwana Solution: Before e-Parwana, the applications were submitted at Taluka Level. e-Parwana has eliminated one step by submitting the application to District Level functionaries. It has reduced the list of documents from 30-40 to 10. Documents like Toilet certificate was removed from the list. Online payment is introduced using Government Receipts and Account System (GRAS). Online filing of Monthly Sales Returns is being implemented. SMS based alerts were sent for License validation, License renewal and Application Status. He had briefed the technical architecture of e-Parwana, saying that the Department has designed a three-tier Model-View-Controller. It is developed in Open Source using PHP, Java and Apache app server. Database is also developed through Open Source using Postgre SQL and Jasper Reports. Modules of e-Parwana:
License Application & Processing System Monthly Sales Return (MSR) Product Information Features of e-Parwana:
License Application & Processing System Monthly Sales Return (MSR) Product Information Beneficiaries of e-Parwana:
Farmers Pesticide Industry Fertilizer Industry Seed Growers/Producers Dealers of Seed, Fertilizers and Pesticide Importers and Exporters of Seed, Fertilizers and Pesticide Agriculture Department – Quality Control Division Pre Vs Post implementation of e-Parwana Scenario is shown below:
Criteria Pre- eParwana Post eParwana Benefits
License • Manual • Online • Processing time – procedure from 3 months to 1 • Non uniform • Reengineered month • Time • Uniform • Monthly consuming applications up • Repeated from 10 to 30 office visits • Advanced renewal SMS alerts
Monthly • Manual • Online submission • Reduction in efforts sales submission • Demand forecast returns • Huge paper possible work • No electronic database
Product • Available only • Online submission • Easily available information in paper information in • Marathi & English format, mostly Marathi in English • Manual submission
License • Most renewal • License expiry • Better license Renewal after license details available enforcement expiry • SMS alert for • Increase in timely • Difficult to license renewal renewals track invalid • Users can also licenses ‘pull’ license • Rare advance information renewals (Check Validity: EPARWA
Key Learnings of e-Parwana: He explained the key learnings of e-Parwana saying that roll out of the project in a phased manner ensures efficient implementation of the project. Introducing Change Management in the beginning of the project ensures future sustenance. Understanding the requirements of the farmers plays a very crucial role in the implementation of the project. He further said that single source of information should be made available keeping in view the requirements of the farmers. Merits of e-Parwana: He explained the merits of the project saying that the department has developed application and hosted it at the NIC without cost. The Department bears only the cost of manpower (programmers). Approximate cost of the project is about INR 8 Lakh/year. Revenue generated till date is about INR 3.5 Cr. He said that services are made available under single portal reducing the direct and indirect costs of obtaining the licenses, product information and filing sales returns. Licenses issued till date under the project:
Input No. of licenses
Seeds 30,880
Fertilizers 42,457
Insecticides 47,261
Nursery 48
He discussed about other initiatives mentioned below: Mobile apps Shetkari Masik Android app launched Planned apps Krushi Vaidya (pest, disease management and dosage calculator) Aadarshgaon magazine Scheme information Package of practice USSD: Brief information about schemes Pest, disease & weed management information IVRS: Fertilizer rates Web based Scheme Monitoring MIS
Open House Discussions on e-Parwana: 1. Question raised by Shri Ramakrishna, Senior Consultant from CIPS How the environment is built up to be harmonious with the Innovation among the staff? What are the challenges faced? How did you overcome? Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that they have faced challenges from the dealers. Initially, they were not ready to use the entire online system. There was lack of uniformity. The department has demonstrated them by conducting a workshop. Therefore during the workshop they had built trust between dealer’s community and the department. Also, there were regular trainings conducted within the department in input cell. All the officers in input cell have made their suggestions and their suggestions were taken in to consideration. In this way, the trust was built. NIC has also extended its support in this regard. In this way the dealers and distributors have accepted the system. 2. Question raised from NIC Kerala Participant from Kerala asked the requirements for implementing the Project in Kerala Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that they will speak with the concerned NIC officer of Kerala and share the pre-requisites of e-Parwana with them. After discussions, they will share the technical requirements of the project with Department of Agriculture, Kerala. 3. Participant from NIC-Tripura Tripura has requested to explain more about Cropwatch and CROPSAP (Crop Pest Surveillance & Advisory Project) Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that they will share the details via e-Mail and requested e-Mail address of Department of Agriculture, Tripura Tripura has asked about the software required for NIC to implement e-Parwana project in Tripura. Also they have asked for the finance required for implementing the project. Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that they will share the details with NIC Tripura. e-Parwana can be used by taking the source code and deployed in the Server. The cost of project depends on man-power. 4. Participant from Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh has requested to know more about GRAS system Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar explained saying that GRAS system is developed by NIC, Maharasshtra. It stands for Government Receipts and Accounts System. In this system, around 10-12 banks are available using which various fees can be paid to the Government. It is a Government Payment Gateway prepared by NIC. Madhya Pradesh further asked about what could be the steps to adopt the project in their state. NIC Pune is the key point of contact for implementing the project. The details of the contact person is mentioned below: Mr Kailash, Mobile No: 09422017051 5. Jammu and Kashmir has requested for a detailed report of the project. Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar has reque sted them to share their e-Mail Id. 6. Telangana has asked the team of e-Parwana, whether the Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra is accepting the scanned copies and uploading the documents on websites or are they issuing only hard copies at the time of submission. Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar answered saying that hard copies are accepted for verification. He said that there is a check list available at the time of submission. As of now they are not accepting scanned copies of documents. Telangana has asked the team saying that after License in generated in the system, they have to manually sign and again upload the signed license in the system or have they gone for any digital signature Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar clarified saying that the documents are digitally signed. Telangana has asked the monthly maintenance cost of e-Parwana Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that the monthly maintenance cost is about Rs 50,000. Telangana has asked about the integration of the project with Common Service Centres (CSCs) Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar said that they will be doing it in this year. 7. Participants from Agartala, Tripura has requested for details of the e-Parwana project to replicate it in their state Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar has asked him the mail id for sharing the details. The mail id of Participant from Tripura is [email protected]; Mobile No: 08794839604
2. e-Extension Initiatives of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University - Dr. N. Anandaraja, Assistant Professor (Agricultural Extension), Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Dr. Nallusamy Anandaraja is working as Assistant Professor in e- Extension centre, Directorate of Extension Education, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. He has been specialized in Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture (ICT-A) and bagged two prestigious Awards on ICARs best Post Graduate Agricultural Research Award on Jawaharlal Nehru Award and Young Scientist Award constituted by Indian Science Congress Association from the former president of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Currently, he holds two important research projects sponsored by Govt. of India & Govt. of Tamil Nadu on Back Office-Dynamic Market Information and Invigorating Extension through ICT tools. He has completed eighteen projects funded by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Planning Commission, GOI and IGNOU.
He has explored the power and potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) intervention in Transfer of Farm Technology which may accelerate the speed of flow of technology, weather data and price information to extension system and finally reach to the needy farmers. Few of the notable initiatives in e-Extension centre are 1. TNAU AGRI TECH PORTAL http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/ 2. TNAU Multi Video Conference facility http://vcon.tnau.ac.in (Meeting ID protected) 3. Dynamic Market Price Information for Perishable Commodities http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/dmi/2015/index.html 4. TNAU- Agricultural Market Information System http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/amis/index.html 5. TNAU-IIT, Chennai Mobile Agro Advisory Services http://e-vivasaya.rtbi.in/aas/index.php (Password protected) 6. TNAU Video Modules http://www.agritech.tnau.ac.in/technologivideostnau.html 7. TNAU Plant Protection Information http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/crop_protection/crop_prot.html 8. TNAU e-Course information http://agridr.in/tnauEAgri/ 9. TNAU Weather Information Network http://tawn.tnau.ac.in/ 10. TNAU-ICAR Mobilizing Mass Media for Sharing Agro Information http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/govt_schemes_services/mmedia/index.html 11. TNAU-online e-Radio http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/comm_e_radio.html For his credit he has published seven books and more than 40 research and popular articles in National and International Journals. Dr. N. Anandaraja, Assistant Professor (Agricultural Extension), Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu has presented e-Extension Initiatives of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. Initially he explained the e-Extension Initiatives of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. They are 1. TNAU AGRI TECH Portal 2. Multi Video Conferencing 3. Dynamic Market Information (DMI)-Kisan SMS 4. Domestic &Export Market Intelligence Cell 5. Automatic Weather Network 6. Crop Doctor-Expert System 7. Instant Agro Advisory System 8. TNAU-IFPRI Knowledge Management Portal 9. Video Clipping through Cloud Computing 10. Invigorating Extension through ICT Tools He spoke about TNAU Agritech Portal (http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/) and described the features of the portal with the help of the snapshot provided below:
He said that TNAU Agritech Portal is one of the best agriculture portals in the country. Salient features of the Portal: 1. Bi-lingual (Tamil and English) 2. Portal comprises of Six lakh pages of information including Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandary, fisheries, marketing, seri-culture, etc. 3. A to Z technological information on Agriculture and Allied sectors 4. Central and State Govt. Agricultural Schemes and Services 5. Farmers’ success stories and daily newspaper information on agriculture 6. e-Community Radio 7. 1000-Video Clippings The portal is more interactive and user friendly. Unique feature of the portal is it is being updated on daily basis. Daily visitors of the portal will be around 11,000-13,500. He said that TNAU contains multiple video conferencing facilities.
Salient features of Video Conferencing facility: 1. Enabling to share power point presentation along with video conference 2. On-line chatting 3. Moderator option for effective span of control 4. Simultaneously 24 parallel meetings can be scheduled He has shown some snapshots of Dynamic Market Information. He said that initially Dynamic Market Information project was started with the help of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Hyderabad. He said that TNAU is using BSNL Gateway for sending the sms of price information. Daily price information of 160 commodities (68 vegetables, 36 fruits, 37 flowers, 11 spices and 8 plantation crops) is available on the portal. SMS are provided to farmers and extension officials by using Kisan SMS Portal (Govt. of India). Every day by 11 am, the market information can be viewed in the portal site. Traders database, Market Profile, SMS request form are available on the portal. He further said that they have started Agriculture Marketing Information System, where all the markets including AGMARKNET, etc. are made available on single platform. He discussed about Crop Doctor Initiative, which deals with diagnosing the pests, diseases and nutritional disorders, key visual symptoms (primary symptom) with multiple sub-levels (secondary symptoms) and knowing appropriate solution. TNAU has developed multi lingual expert systems (English, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) for crops like paddy, sugarcane, banana, coconut, millets, etc. The Government of Tamil Nadu of Tamil Nadu is implementing the project called Farm Crop Management System. In this system, individual farmer’s database is built. He has shown the snapshots of Interactive Multimedia Advisory System and Mobile based Agro Advisory System.
Tamil Nadu Agriculture Weather Network (TAWN):
Government of Tamil Nadu under National Agricultural Development Project (NADP) have funded for establishing Tamil Nadu Agricultural Weather Network (TAWN) by installing 385 AWS, 224 in the first phase and 161 in the second phase.
The Agro Climate Research Centre (ACRC), Directorate of Crop Management (DCM), Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore in collaboration with Department of Agriculture, 1 Tamil Nadu established the TAWN .
He discussed about salient features of Tamil Nadu Agriculture Weather Network. They are shown below: Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) installed in all blocks of Tamil Nadu Maximum and minimum air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, soil moisture, soil temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, atmospheric pressure and leaf wetness are recorded daily
1 http://tawn.tnau.ac.in/General/HomePublicUI.aspx
Updation of hourly weather database through GSM technology Facilitates extension functionaries to render weather based agro advisory services to farmers Weather forecast information at short, medium and long range periods He discussed about one of the initiatives called e-Velanmai, an ICT based Agricultural Extension Model and explained the process of how it can reach the farmers. e-Velanmai: e-Velanmai2 is referred as demand driven participatory extension system because:
Farmers pay a membership fee based on the farm size owned by them to avail the extension services under e-Velanmai as a mark of their participation in the system of technology transfer. Scientists attend the farmers queries based on their call (demand) or need and hence it is demand driven for technical advice or scientific farming. It is also believed to be sustainable approach of extension as the farmers are going to take up the e-Velanmai model of technology transfer by themselves in the long run even after the scheme period (2012). The membership fees collected will be utilized for sustainability of the scheme. Sustainability component is inbuilt in the process itself
He explained the salient features of Education Media Centre. They are listed below: Equipped with professional digital audio and video equipments Creation of video lessons, audio CD lessons on agriculture and allied fields Production of video programmes for direct telecast through Doordarshan
2 http://tniamwarmtnau.org/technologies/e-velanmai-tn-iamwarm.pdf
Production of video films for Government departments, NGOs and private agencies Production of complementary video modules for PGDAEM courses of MANAGE, Hyderabad Video programmes on ‘Achiever Farmers’ and ‘Award Winners’ TNAU Community Radio Station:
The TNAU, Community Radio Station3 which has the coverage of 15 to 20 km, has the feature of ‘e’ component in it and hence the broadcast programme is integrated into the e – Extension network.
Handling Community e – Radio is an interesting and creative task. All the three types of intelligence viz., abstract, mechanical and social, are judiciously utilized in this ICT tool for making the programmes informative as well as interesting.
He explained the features of TNAU Community Radio Station given below: Operated under the name “Vivasayee FM” (107.4 MHz) Rural community within 20 Kilometres radius is benefited Programmes on special technologies, farmers’ success stories, community development etc., are broadcasted All the programmes are uploaded in the TNAU Agritech Portal (http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/comm_e_radio.html) Cloud Computing with Videos TNAU has produced 1000 video clippings on agriculture and allied fields in 3GP format using Cloud Computing. Outcomes of Experimentation… 1. TNAU Agri Tech Portal 2. Crop Doctor 3. Multi Video Conference 4. Cross platform of Android, Mac iOS 5. Training the Extension Officials Phase-I (1482) 6. On-line and off-line Access
3 http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/comm_e_radio.html
7. Instant interaction with Research Institutes and KVKs He said that in order to replicate the model, they would Facilitate for the establishment of e-Extension Center Facilitate for the establishment of Agri Tech Portal (Agricultural Commodities on project mode of Hardware and software aspects) on project mode. Facilitate in developing expert systems for various customized capacity building program Conduct mes Organize Study Visits on ICT related ventures Organize collaborative workshops / seminars / conferences etc., Open House Discussions on e-Extension initiatives of TNAU: 1. Haryana Participant from Haryana asked about the usage of Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) instead of GPS. The participant also asked about the usage of navigation system to track the movement of field level functionaries Dr Anandraja said that they have already included the GIS mapping tool developed by NIC. The touch screen tablets have been distributed to all the department functionaries to track the movements of field level functionaries. They are planning to incorporate Aadhaar data and Election Card data with Farm Crop Management System. 2. Thrissur, Kerala Participant from Kerala has asked to explain more about Community Radio Dr Anandraja said that the Community Radio is established in tribal belts where the people are unable to read. Community Radio is operated under the name “Vivasayee FM” (107.4 MHz) in which programmes on special technologies, farmers’ success stories, community development etc., are broadcasted. 3. NIC, Meghalaya Participant from Meghalaya has asked to explain more about ICT based Agri. Extension Model Dr Anandaraja said that most of the farmers are illiterates. Therefore we cannot educate the farmers with ICT based models even with sms based alerts. He said that they are educating the Extension Officers and intermediaries. In future (before 2020) they will be connecting farm holders through mobiles, tablets, etc. so that they will be able to access the required data. He said that Govt. of India will bring out the 3G connectivity. Within 2-3 years the connectivity issues will be sorted out by Govt. of India. 4. Mr Harshvardhan Mirajkar has asked whether the Dynamic Market Information (DMI)- Kisan SMS are being sent manually or they have any automated process Dr Anandaraja said that they are having automated process. RKVY is providing the funding support for the project. They are having their own market analysis. Their database is built by CDAC. He said that they are taking the price information manually from the server database and then insert the data in to the m-Kisan Server. Vote of Thanks: Shri Ramakrishna, Senior Consultant, CIPS thanked all the participants from North to South and West to East for showing their interest and participating in the VC. He has expressed his warm regards to the Resource Persons for showcasing the innovations and explaining them about the innovative practices in detail in spite of so many queries. He said that the presentations appeared to be the fountains of knowledge. He encouraged the participants to learn from the showcased best practices by experts, if possible undergo field visits to the respective offices. He said that CIPS would be happy to replicate the best practices and develop the case studies of the innovations in order to bring good governance in the country.