HimVani
Shimla: Recently founded elite technology institution IIT Mandi has shown its eagerness to rid the farmers off the agrarian crisis after setting up Joint Working Group(JWG) with government department to sort out their key problems, state official disclosed here today.
State Secretary Agriculture Ram Subhag Singh said in a statement issued here today that state Agriculture Department and IIT Mandi would join hands after formulating a scheme as JWG would be formed for sorting out the problems relating to farm technology. Director IIT Mandi T.A. Gonsalvej and Ram Subhag Singh choked out the joint strategy on Tuesday, extending cooperation and providing assistance to farmers pertaining to information of agriculture. IIT has also shown eagerness to develop a Mobile Phone ‘Voice Base’ for this purpose, statement quoting official said. IIT is emulating this scheme as it had been started earlier at Chennai (Madras) on pilot basis, which had yielded good results. Those farmers of panchayats in the state who have not been linked with Broad band Internet connectivity would be connected through ‘Voice Base’ network, by being providing information through Mobile Phones. Farmers in this hill state are facing number of problems like low production, monkey and wild animal menace and sharp decline in size of holdings of arable lands. Monkeys and wild boars were even forcing number of them to leave this profession for ever.
