SHILLONG: The Megha-laya Basin Development Authority (MBDA) and Media Lab Asia signed an MoU on Friday to take the Mobile Based Agricultural Extension System in North-East India, or m4AgriNEI, to all the 11 districts of the State.
At present, m4AgriNEI is implemented in five districts — Ri-Bhoi, East Khasi Hills, West Jaintia Hills, West Garo Hills and South West Garo Hills — and more than 11,000 farmers are registered to receive the agro advisory services.
Speaking at a workshop on the ‘Potentialities of m4AgriNEI for Meghalaya’ held at the MeBaDa hall of the Meghalaya Institute of Governance (MIG) on Friday, senior director (research) at Media Lab Asia (MLAsia) V.K Bhatia said, “In the collaboration with MBDA, it is expected that m4AgriNEI will be extended to 11 districts of Meghalaya, capacity building of key stakeholders of m4AgriNEI and MBDA support to each other. More than 6,000 farmers are benefited from the 70 training and awareness programmes on crop cultivation and livestock management.”
P.S Kumar, Deputy CEO of MBDA, said, “Doubling the farmers’ income requires a multi-pronged approach by handholding the farmers. Meghalaya has close to 5 lakh rural households. We can track every farmer to work towards capturing the data of a farmer. We will work closely with Village Employment Councils in this regard.”
Kumar said the signing of the MoU will enable the State to take use of technology for innovation in agriculture forward.
Y. Tsering, Additional Chief Secretary, said the partnership will benefit farmers of the State.
While talking about the advancement in the field of medicines as MLAsia also deals in rural telemedicine system, Tsering presented a gloomy picture of the health scenario in the State. “There is shortage of doctors in Meghalaya, especially specialists. There are doctors who do not want to serve in rural areas,” he said.
MLAsia was represented by its MD and CEO M.R Anand, Government of India, and Bhatia, while the MBDA was represented by Tsering, R.M Mishra, CEO, MBDA and Kumar.
Later speaking to reporters, Anand said, “It is a small and limited project but we want to take it to more farmers. We have signed the memorandum and we have to work the details and understand how the ground situation and the network are and we need the support of domain experts. We will work with officials of MBDA and software experts will also support them.”
Bhatia said cloud technology is used with servers based in Mumbai. “Farmers need information for pesticide and crop and seeds experts will be able to answer their queries, we register the farmers and details of his form,” he added.
When asked about the difference between Kisan call and m4AgriNEI, he said, “A kisan call centre is basically pushing the information and have no idea about the person receiving the information. They pushed large number of messages, even a potato grower is receiving information on how to grow ginger.”
The m4AgriNEI is implemented by MLAsia under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology as well as College of Post Graduate Studies (CPGS), Central Agricultural University, Umiam.
The agro advisory service was launched in 2013 by the then Secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology along with the Chief Secretary of the state at CPGS.
