Web Service For Farmers' Aid By Indian Government

To the 60 percent of the Indian population that still earns its bread and butter through agriculture, the government has chalked out a spoken #-Link-Snipped-# catering to all the needs of the farming community. Farmers can interact and get the solutions to their agro-related queries promptly via this service.

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source: travelindiasmart.com

The Ministry of Earth Sciences went up to the IBM to develop a committed agromet (agriculture meteorological) service for the Indian farmers. The company has just introduced a similar service for farmers to link them up with Amul Dairy. The ministry now even renders SMS and an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) service to farmers, providing them farming information, weather and climatic info to help them cope up with the agricultural demands.

Shailesh Nayak, secretary in the ministry, stated that the ministry sought IBM for this project. But IBM refused to have any details regarding this project. This project is where farmers can expect to get a reciprocation on their queries. All they have to do is dial a toll-free number and submit their query, to which they'll get instant reply. However, in some cases, the queries would be recorded and shall be answered by experts later on.

The SMS and IVRS services were introduced in 2009 dealing over 5,000 farmers. Presently it caters to 2.8 million farmers and the number is expected to go well above 20 million by 2017.