National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA)

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    In News –National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA) has been extended up to March 2021.

    About National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA)

    • It was initially launched in 2010-11 in 7 pilot States as a  Centrally Sponsored Scheme
    • It aims to achieve rapid development in India through use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for timely access to agriculture related information to the farmers.
    • Phase-II
      • In 2014-15, the scheme was further extended for all the remaining States and 2 UTs.
      • Under Phase-II, funds were released to States for carrying out the activities viz. site preparation of offices for installation of hardware and establishment of computer training labs, procurement, installation and accounting of hardware/system software.
      •  The Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income (DFI) recommended further expanding and augmenting of the digital agriculture initiatives of the Government of India.
        • The report focused on modern management of agriculture viz. Remote Sensing; Geographical Information System; Data Analytics and Cloud Computing; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning; Internet of Things; Robotics, Drones & Sensors and Block-chain.
    • Amendment of NeGPA guidelines
      • The NeGPA guidelines were amended in 2020-21 and funds were released for sanctioning projects for customization / shifting of web & mobile applications already developed by the States.

    Significance :

    • It would make current service delivery mechanisms more efficient, transparent and accountable.
    • It will also help the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC) to optimise its costs in delivery of services to various stakeholders.
    • It will generate efficiencies in the system and the benefits shall be released immediately after implementation which will more than offset the total cost of the Project over a period of time.

    Other Steps :

    Unified Farmer Service Platform (UFSP):

    • UFSP is a combination of Core Infrastructure, Data, Applications and Tools that enable seamless interoperability of various public and private IT systems in the agriculture ecosystem across the country.
    • UFSP is envisaged to play the following role:
    • Act as a central agency in the agri ecosystem (like UPI in the e Payments).
    • Enables Registration of the Service Providers, public and private.
    • Enables Registration of the Farmer Services G2F, G2B, B2F and B2B
    • Enforces various rules and validations required during the service delivery process.
    • Acts as a Repository of all the applicable standards, API’s and formats.
    • It shall also act as a medium of data exchange amongst various schemes and services to enable comprehensive delivery of services to the farmer.

    Farmers Database:

    • It was launched for better planning, monitoring, policy making, strategy formulation and smooth implementation of schemes for the farmers a nationwide
    • Objectives :
    • Develop nationwide database of farmers
    • Keep a record of unique farmers.
    • Unique farmer ID (FID) to uniquely identify a farmer
    • To know benefits availed by a farmer under various schemes

    Significance –

    • This Centralized Farmers Database shall be useful for various activities like issuing soil health cards, dissemination of crop advisories to the farmers, precision farming, smart cards for farmers to facilitate e-governance, crop insurance, settlement of compensation- claims, grant of agricultural subsidies, community/village resource centres etc.

    Source :PIB

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