Embracing the digital fueled transformation, technology is fast changing the face of the farmers and villages. From laying down the framework of ‘India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture – (IDEA)’, to involving AI, Machine Learning, Drones, Data Analytics in the agriculture industry, the centre’s policies are overcoming increasing demand and disruptive forces along with other issues.
“At the core of our good governance efforts in India’s villages is to leverage the power of technology for the welfare of people,” these are the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to Jammu & Kashmir. Evidently, technology penetration in the Indian agriculture sector is happening at various levels starting from – policy interventions to digital innovations. For policy intervention, the proof in the pudding is the SVAMITVA scheme, in which nearly 36 Lakh Property cards have been prepared in 28,603 villages. Under Digital Innovation, the centre developed mActionSoft – a mobile-based solution to help in capturing photos with Geo-Tags. 2.52 lakh photographs of the assets have been uploaded by the Gram Panchayats for the activities taken under the fifteenth Finance Commission. Further, Towards leveraging technology in data management, MoPR conceptualized the application “AuditOnline” that not only facilitates the auditing of accounts but also provisions for maintaining digital audit records. This is definitely a big leap from Social Audits, a rigorous process that constitutes verifying the field realities with data in official documents and discussing the findings on a public platform such as Gram Sabha.
India’s fight against COVID-19 till now, has also established the importance of bringing data-driven strategies for COVID-19 management, especially in rural areas where the lack of information regarding COVID-19 management can severely constrain pandemic management. Rural India requires localized policy interventions to ensure the optimization of critical resources. With this idea in mind, the focus on technology again proved helpful as MoPR tactfully developed COVID19 DASHBOARD in collaboration with NIC that helped India monitor covid related policy implementation at the grassroots level.
Besides, the country is even in the process of developing Smart Vending Carts to be used by Vendors in rural areas. In fact, a Smart Vending E-Cart, designed by IIT Bombay, has been demonstrated and found to be quite appropriate for the use by vendors / small businesses in rural, peri-urban and farm sectors. With a call for ‘Meri Panchayat Mera Adhikaar – Jan Sevaayein Hamaare Dwaar’ the government has created a Citizen Charter document that rightly shifts focus to where it belongs – the Rural Citizenry. The government is also ensuring ‘ease of living’, financial inclusion and complete digitalisation, among other aspects. And this can rightly be achieved by putting ‘Data’ at the heart of all development goals.
From healthcare to education to finance and manufacturing; various sectors governing our economies, have become technology-driven. This also holds true for one of the oldest industries known to civilization – Agriculture.
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