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Agricultural universities in state to upgrade kisan call centres

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BS Reporter Mumbai/ Ahmedabad

In a bid to make information assimilation more robust, Agricultural Universities of Gujarat have proposed upgradation of the 'Kisan Call Centres' in the state. While so far the call centres provide agri information to farmers, the varsities are mulling creating a database of information sought from the farmers too.

The proposal was made during a workshop 'Mitigating Agricultural Communication Gaps' being organised by Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) on Tuesday.

"So far, the call centres takes care of agri-related complaints of farmers and provides them information. However, now the agri varsities are looking at assimilating information from farmers and create a database for research purposes," said Santosh Patra, workshop co-ordinator and faculty member at MICA.

 

The workshop is being organised as a part of the national project to develop alternative ICT models for agriculture under National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP): Component 4: Basic and Strategic Research. Participating in the two-days workshop that began on Tuesday, the Agricultural Universities of Gujarat and Directorate of Agriculture also gave further feedbacks to strengthen the communication model that has been developed by Media Lab Asia with the help of other partners in the project. "The project has come to its second phase with the evolving models and communication gaps identified in the field of agricultural communication. Under this project, all the partners studied 26 ICT initiatives to identify communication gaps that exist in the field of agriculture. The development of this unique model will be only of its kind for the agricultural sector. MICA is partner with Media Lab Asia, Delhi; Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), Hyderabad and National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad," Patra added.

The workshop also saw participation from representatives of Indian Society for Agricultural Professionals, New Delhi; Media Lab Asia, New Delhi; Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Hyderabad (ANGRAU); National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hydrabad; Space Applications Centre; and Department of Agriculture, Government of Uttarakhand.

Further, empasising on socio-economic dynamics of communication in agriculture, Arbind Sinha, associate director of MICA said, "The agricultural information needs to be integrated into technology that is freely available to the people and appreciated the efforts of communication model being developed by consortium partners to mitigate communication gaps in agricultural communication. We hoped further deliberations during the two-days workshop may throw light on possible use of the alternate model."

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First Published: Mar 14 2012 | 12:35 AM IST

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