Organization : Department of Agriculture & Cooperation and Farmers Welfare
Service Name : Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS)
Website : https://mkisan.gov.in/
Interactive Voice Response System :
** Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipient.
Related : mKisan USSD Application : www.statusin.in/20428.html
** An IVR application provides pre-recorded voice responses for appropriate situations, keypad signal logic, access to relevant data and potentially the ability to record voice input for later handling.
** Using computer telephony integration (CTI), IVR applications bring in efficiency in terms of call handling. Generally an IVR system consists of telephony equipment, software applications, a database and the supporting infrastructure.
Types of IVRS calls in mKisan:
Outbound Calls :
These are used for obtaining feedback of farmers regarding the advisories they are receiving from experts and also on the quality of information being given to them by KCC agents. A farmer can rate the advisory or answer given by KCC agent on the scale of 1 to 5. This service is available in 12 different Indian Languages.
Inbound Calls :
Farmers or all other stakeholders can call this number (022-67870177) for giving useful feedback on the services or for obtaining any information from a predefined menue.
Registration through SMS :
Farmers can also register by sending an SMS on 51969 or 7738299899.
Procedure and format for registration are as under :
** Format for typing in the message text box is “KISAAN REG < NAME > , <STATE NAME >, <DISTRICT NAME>, and <BLOCK NAME>” (only first 3 letters of State, District & Block Names are needed)
** After typing the message send it to 51969 or 7738299899.
Farmer will be charged for this SMS. There will however be no charge for subsequent SMSs received from experts & officers. Please note that commas (,) are necessary.
About Mobile Application :
All applications and services listed in other sections of m-Kisan Portal are accessible on any kind of mobile phone including basic feature phone. Even today, feature phones (as against smart phones) constitute maximum share of mobile phone in India.
However, with increasing penetration of smart phones in India and affordable prices (likely to go down further with the introduction of Android One by Google), it has been considered necessary to create mobile Apps.
Android Operating System has the largest share among the smart phones in India. Therefore, initially Apps are being developed for Android and gradually other operating system such as Windows and iOS will also be worked upon.
The Apps are not only useful for remote location data entry where desktop PCs are not available, but would also be available to farmers and all other stakeholders for extracting information from the web.
About mKisan:
** As per TRAI data of May, 2014, though there are about 38 crore mobile telephone connections in rural areas, internet penetration in the countryside is still abysmally low (in single digit percentage). Therefore, mobile messaging is the most effective tool so far having pervasive outreach to nearly 8.93 crore farm families.
** mKisan SMS Portal for farmers enables all Central and State government organizations in agriculture and allied sectors to give information/services/advisories to farmers by SMS in their language, preference of agricultural practices and location.