Farmers who were used to half an hour of Krishi Darshan will now be spoilt for choice. They will have an exclusive channel devoted to farming, programmes in their regional languages with information on crops grown in their area and call centres with toll free number to call round the clock. These facilities will be launched by the Prime Minister on January 21.These programmes were cleared in the CCEA on Thursday. Addressing the press, Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh said that this was part of the government’s mass media support for agriculture during the ongoing five year plan. He denied that this decision was taken with an eye on the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. ‘‘I had marked these as priorities six months ago when I took over as the Minister,’’ he said.Setting up of cable satellite channels, FM stations and call centres for for farmers is expected to cost Rs 315.28 crore during the 10th plan period.The cable agri-channel carrying agriculture related information will have a one-hour broadcast on the available transponder with IGNOU and will be repeated four times a day during the current year. This would go upto two-hours subsequently.In addition, 12 low-power transmitters of Doordarshan will be used to broadcast one-hour programmes that address the problems and issues specific to the local farming area at a cost of Rs 179.42 crores for the Tenth Plan.Called ‘Narrow-casting’, these transmitters function as relay stations normally but now will be given play-back facilities so that they operate as local transmitters when delinked from the National channel.In addition, eight call centres in regional languages are being established for a 24-hour service. They would be manned by agricultural graduates and would answer queries with 72 hours of the call being made. At night, the calls would be recorded and answered later.The places which will benefit from this toll free number 1551 is Delhi, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. This would cost Rs 10 crores for five years. Each centre would cater to 4-5 years. An AIR FM radio channel is expected to be launched next month.
