Roorkee (The Hawk): Dr Arvind Kumar working as Technical Officer under Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) project at Department of Water Resources Development and Management (WRD&M Deptt), IIT Roorkee has been selected for the post of Scientist-D (Agrometeorology) at India Meteorological Department (IMD), Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India.
Dr. Kumar told that where he has got an opportunity to serve the farmers across the country by being selected as Scientist-D in the 'Mausam Bhawan' Headquarter at New Delhi under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, on one hand, he is also well aware of the responsibility of taking meaningful initiatives towards further strengthening the utility of weather services to the farmers, on the other hand. He apprised that it would be his best effort to decide the direction of research with keeping in mind to the current needs of the farmers in the field of Agrometeorological Advisory Services, so that the present challenges could be overcome in the coming days. His entire focus will be on how the benefits of favorable weather can be passed on to the farmers by minimizing the losses due to adverse weather effects in the agriculture sector.
The biggest priority would be to make quality agro-meteorological advisory services accessible to each and every farmer of the country through technology, which every effort would be made to complete it in a phase-wise manner in the stipulated time, Dr Kumar said.
Initiatives taken at IIT Roorkee would try to be implemented across the country to strengthen the Agromet Advisory Services under GKMS Project
Several initiatives taken to strengthen and popularize the Agromet Advisory Services for the districts under area jurisdiction of AMFU IIT Roorkee by Dr Arvind Kumar which would try to be implemented across the country. The initiation of 'Audio Agromet Advisory Bulletins' for the farmers who are unable to read the bulletins are being highly appreciated by the farmers.
Apart from this, initiation of 'Mausam Mitra' has been taken for voluntarily dissemination of Block-level Agromet Advisories through the creation of WhatsApp group of farmers of their respective villages. The 'Mausam Mitra' who are performing their volunteer services well, being felicitated jointly by AMFU Roorkee and IMD every year. A mobile App namely 'KISAN' has been developed in collaboration with NRSC-ISRO, New Delhi for the dissemination of block-level bulletins to the farmers with a feedback mechanism to collect feedback from farmers on the quality and relevancy of the Bulletin. The special feature of KISAN App is that the farmers can get these services for the registered block only which makes this App simple and easy to the users.
Separate website has also been developed for the AMFU Roorkee which is fully dedicated to the farmers of the mandate districts. In addition, a Facebook page, and accounts on other social media platform for AMFU Roorkee have been created for the real-time dissemination of weather alerts, which is useful especially for the dissemination of now-cast too. Consequences upon this, The Agromet Advisory Services being provided by the AMFU Roorkee have now been accessible to all 643 villages of Haridwar district and continuous efforts are being made to make these services available up to each farmer of the district. Some basic and essential tools for the preparation of quality Agromet Advisory Bulletins, like district-level Crop-Weather calendars, have also been developed by Dr Arvind Kumar. This tool consists the crop-weather-pest-disease calendars for major cereal, oilseed, sugar, vegetable and horticultural crops of the district, along with livestock, poultry and fisheries-weather calendars in a single document.
Dr Kumar said that all these initiatives taken in the interest of farmers could be made possible due to the favorable environment and necessary resources received from the Director IIT Roorkee Prof Ajit K Chaturvedi and the personal interest shown by Prof Ashish Pandey, Nodal Officer, GKMS Project to the farmers of the region. Hence, whole credit should be given to both of them.
