…Unleashing the Power of Mobile in the Hands of Farmers
MULTITUDE OF ICT INITIATIVES
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 :
What to do now?
Integrated Portal – Farmers’ Portal
www.farmer.gov.in
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 (www.dackkms.gov.in) with CSCs
(www.csc.gov.in)
India is now world’s
3rd 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.
Origin of mKisan
While awareness of
services is relatively
high, usership is low
due to
infrastructural
availability and
knowledge.
As per TRAI data, 38
crore mobile
phones in rural
areas.
151 crore
messages
and nearly 1
lac advisories
Flurry of
movement
under USSD
mKisan
IVRS & Voice
Messages
started
Huge
Response
through Pull
SMS Services
Integration of
Departmental
Services
across the
country
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
 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.
Transactions on eTaal
16
Integration with e-taal
Graphical Drillable Public Dashboard
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
 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 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…
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 charges @ 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
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