Organisation : Department of Agriculture & Cooperation & Farmers Welfare
Facility : Shetkari Masik Android App
Applicable For : All India
Website : https://mkisan.gov.in/
Shetkari Masik App :
“Shetkari Masik” is one of the most popular monthly magazines in the Agriculture sector, under publication since 1965. It is published by Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra.
Related : Kissan Kerala Krishideepam : www.statusin.in/26155.html
The main purpose of the magazine is to provide information about agriculture and modern technology to readers (mainly farmers).
The magazine carries articles on various aspects of agriculture and covers topics such as new crop technologies, pest and disease management, organic farming, farming methods resulting in higher yields, irrigation methods, crop insurance etc.
Apart from agriculture, animal husbandry, poultry, fishery, forestry, agro industry and biotechnology are also covered. The articles are written by agriculture officers from the department as well as experts and scientist from the agriculture universities and research centres
Android App :
The Android app for Shetkari magazine has a very simple interface and requires mobile internet or WiFi connectivity to register and download the issues. Once downloaded, the magazine can be read without internet connectivity.
A user first needs to complete a onetime installation by providing details such a Name, Mobile number, email ID, District, Block and Village. Only Name and mobile number fields are mandatory.
The user can also indicate whether he/she would like to become a subscriber for the hard copy magazine. It is planned to develop a system such that, if a user indicates ‘Yes’, they should be able to register online and pay the fees using GRAS online payment system.
After registering, the user can download the available magazine issues and read them. The size of the digital version of the magazine is kept low. Size of a monthly issue is less than 2 Mb, so it can be downloaded even with EDGE, GPRS or 2G data speeds.
The application is developed and hosted at Science and Technology Park (STP), Pune, which an agency promoted by DST (Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India). After security audit, the application can be hosted at NeGPA servers in SDC, Mantralaya.
The application is available on Google Play Store. Currently, only August 2014 issue is available due to Code of Conduct regulations. Later, magazine issues from 2010 onwards shall be made available. Earlier issues shall be made available after digitization of magazines
About Mobile App :
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.