…Unleashing the Power of Mobile in the Hands of Farmers

MULTITUDE OF ICT INITIATIVES MULTITUDE OF ICT INITIATIVES

Background Background  Agricultural huge information is available on the web.  Three magic figures : 800….80….8  800 websites  80 DAC - websites  8 organizations  Every department is having its own website, portal and forum.  Most of the available information is in English

Can a farmer access this ‘Web’ of information

Answer is :

Whatto do now? What to do now?

Integrated Portal – Farmers’ Portal

Farmers’ Portal Farmers’ Portal  An integrated portal from the stand point of a farmer converging elements from 800 plus websites and giving information about :  Dealers (seed, fertilizer, pesticide, machinery)  Government schemes & subsidy  Location of Storage Godowns  Daily Market Price of commodities  Drill down approach from state down to block level.  Databases integrated from different sources and displayed as per farmers’ need.  Currently available in English & Hindi and planning to launch it in all regional languages.

Kisaan Call Centres  Aim is to reach at least one third the farmers households, once in an year.  Total 1.60 crore calls registered at KCCs since inception.  Call barging and 100% call recording facility.  SMS to caller farmers providing a gist of advisories given to them on phone in local language  Voice mail system for recording farmer’s queries with provision for call back.  Facility of video conferencing for upgradation of skills of KCC agents.  Full Involvement of State Governments, KVKs and SAUs in Call Escalation Matrix & Training  Integration of KKMS ( with CSCs (

India is now world’s 3 rd largest Internet user, but only 4.6% of rural India has accessed internet once in their life. Majority of users have used it primarily as a source of entertainment and communication. As per TRAI data, 38 crore mobile phones in rural areas. While awareness of services is relatively high, usership is low due to infrastructural availability and knowledge. Origin of mKisan

A Pervasive & Efficacious Journey so far… A Pervasive & Efficacious Journey so far…  Started with SMS advisories when it was inaugurated by the Hon’ble President of India.  More than 1 lac advisory / information count 56 crore messages and around 1.80 billion SMSs have been sent to farmers throughout the length and breadth of the country by thousands of officers & experts down to the Block.  Moved to :  Ksewa : Integration of stand alone and web applications with mKisan.  Rating Mechanism  Pull Service  Voice Advisories  IVRS to get feedback from farmers regarding advisories and answers given by KCC agents.  USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) to facilitate farmers to get information on mobile without internet. Integration of Web – Mobile – Kisan Call Centres – Common Service Centres

SMS Advisories SMS Advisories  All 3 Departments of Ministry of Agriculture, IMD, SAUs, KVKs and State Governments’ officials are experts in our system.  As of now, 70 lac farmers have been integrated – potential to reach 8.93 crore farmer households.  Dissemination of information and advisories to farmers in their own languages free of cost.  To avoid duplication & contradiction, IT enabled checks and search facility  Content based on farmers’ location & priorities of crop / agricultural practices.  Easy Phonetic Typing Tools for 12 Indian languages.  New Features: Delivery Report, Supervisory Control and rating of messages by superiors, User Feedback, Graphical Dashboard, Text to Speech Conversion.

Integration with e-taal Transactions on eTaal Transactions on eTaal 16

Graphical Drillable Public Dashboard Graphical Drillable Public Dashboard

Ksewa – Universal Plugin Ksewa – Universal Plugin From stand alone or web applications to integrate with SMS. Soil Health Card, Market Information, Subsidy Information,Dealer Licensing etc. Earlier, the report was either on the internet or as a printed document. > 4 mobile phones per farm family, SMS is the way. Interface to send the report of these services on the mobile phone of the farmers with a sender id KRISHI

Services through Pull SMS

Voice based Advisories Voice based Advisories  Surveys indicated that many farmers are interested in Voice based advisories.  Supports almost all voice formats (.wav,.mp3,.mp4,.amr,.m4a,.aac,.flac )  Expert can record advisory and upload it on web to send to farmers through SMS Portal.  Thus illiterate and semi literate farmers can also get the expert advisories  Work going on for Text to Speech Conversion without Internet

IVRS in Agriculture IVRS in Agriculture IVRS to get feedback of farmers regarding the advisories from experts and quality of information given to them by KCC agents. We are having IVRS in all 12 Indian languages. A farmer can rate the advisory or answer given by KCC agent on the scale of 1 to 5.

THE USSD MAGIC… THE USSD MAGIC… Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) - A rarely used technology as old as mobile telephony itself USSD is interactive text messaging. mKisan has catalysed demand Remote location data entry and query on databases by text messaging Fixed monthly Rs. 5 – Centralised Payment Mandi price data entry, choice of right machine, seed availability, agromet advisory Android Apps in pipeline

Dial *491*105*2# from a Registered Mobile

Buyer Seller Platform

Buyer Seller Coordination Buyer Seller Coordination Buyer Registration & Approval Selection of Area to buy commodities Price offered for selected commodities Location of Farmers Details of interested buyers along with their offered price is sent to farmers