India has remained in the forefront in using advance technologies, including biotechnology and ICT in increasing her agricultural prodiuctivity. This artice finds the mention of several such initiatives that have already been undertaken or planned.
-
National Institute of Agricultural Marketing has developed a plan for integrated deployment of ICT at every points in the chain.
-
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has developed software for collecting supply and price data from markets and then processing them into ready information over radio, televisions or bulletin boards.
-
In the state of Maharstra, plan for opening over 10,000 community learning and information centres at village level as part of the project Maha-Agrinet to render services to 10 million farm families is on the anvil.
-
State governments scheme of setting up It-enabled information centre in 2001 was a partial success. Only half of the 228 centres set up in 2001 cater to farm related services, according to former deputy agricultural marketing adviser to the Union government, GH Dhankar. He says that IT penetration so far is limited to only 10,000 villages in the country.
-
Three national multi commodity exchanges and some local commodity exchanges have adopted on-line trading and are planning to have online links with various spot markets. Recently the National Spot Exchange for Agricultural Produce (NSEAP) and the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX) launched the first ever Commodity Suchana Kendra TM in Sirsa market in Haryana.
-
Food Corporation of India (FCI) has started computerisation of its 5000 godowns and linking them with the headquarters. The corporation is going ahead with video conferencing facilities through National Informatic Centres between the headquarters and field offices. A helpline has been launched jointly with IIT Kanpur to provide farmers toll free telephone with the help of IIT, Kanpur whereby the farmers can have specific information on the grain procurement operations.
Link: Financial Express
|
