The department of agriculture will soon join the revenue, municipal, registration, health and school education departments to offer multiple services to farmers through Mee Seva (e-Seva), the integrated citizen’s service centres.
The revenue department is offering 20 services, the registration department two, school and health departments one each and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation seven through Mee Seva.
As part of its action plan for the current fiscal year (2012-13), the department of agriculture proposes to offer services including issue of licences of inputs and online soil health results apart from information services available on AGRISNET portal through Mee Seva centres.
Timely information to farmers, be it on weather conditions suitable for agricultural operations or on the minimum support price of an agricultural produce, increases productivity, thus helping the economic development of the farmer and thereby rural areas.
The state information technology department is upgrading the Rajiv Citizen Service Centres which include e-Seva centres in GHMC and other municipalities. Last month, even the Bhoomi counters, that were started in 416 mandals in eight districts two years ago, were upgraded as Mee Seva counters.
According to IT minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Mee Seva centres have been set up in 17 districts and the entire state will have the centres soon. Further, the existing services being offered at Mee Seva centres will be enhanced. Once the NOFN (National Optical Fiber Network) is in place, connecting villages in the state with the information highway in the country, or even in the world, delivery of e-Services to farmers will become better, the minister says.
How will the proposed e-Services through Mee Seva help the farmers? Soil Health Card, one of the services, provides the farmer with information pertaining to the soil of his field and help him decide on what crop tow cultivate. Further, farmers will get information such as soil test based fertiliser recommendations through SMS (short messaging service) on their mobile phones. The department will upgrade Soil Health Car Application to view micro-nutrient soil test results along with macro-nutrient analysis reports of the soil samples sent to soil testing laboratories in the state.
Those manning the counter at Mee Seva centres will help them understand the information provided which will be in Telugu to the maximum extent. The department will also come up with ‘Ask an expert application’ in Telugu.