SRINAGAR: Achieving a significant milestone in an online skill development programme, the Jammu and Kashmir government has recorded enthusiastic registration of farmers across all districts of the UT under ‘Daksh Kisan’, a first-of-its-kind hybrid skilling programme designed exclusively for the farming community.
“Over 12000 farmers have registered themselves in the Daksh Kisan Portal till now and around 3000 farmers have been enrolled in skilling course of their choice. Besides, a substantial number of farmers have already progressed to an advanced level of completion of the online skilling course,” an official spokesperson informed while giving details about ongoing Kisan Sampark Abhiyan.
“Daksh Kisan- is a Learning Management System (LMS) for the skill development of farmers. A first of its kind in the country, DAKSH KISAN, has been developed by the Agriculture Production Department, where 121 skilling courses as per the agro-climatic zones of J&K are available for free to the farmers. A simple scan of the QR code at the back of the pamphlet is being provided to farmers during Kisan Sampark Abhiyan which takes them to Daksh Kisan Portal where they can register for free and undertake any skilling course of his/her liking,” he added.
Attributing the credit of this rare accomplishment to the ambitious ‘Kisan Sampark Abhiyan’, the official said that the initiative launched on 24th April 2023 has completed five rounds till this week with coverage of about 1367 panchayats. Nearly,1.5 lakh farmers across all districts of J&K have attended the orientation programme during these five rounds of orientation programmes.
This massive farmer’s orientation exercise is being undertaken by the Agriculture Production department in J&K whereby ambitious targets of reaching out to farmers in each and every Panchayat has been envisaged under the Kisan Sampark Abhiyan in the next 4 months. The farmer’s outreach exercise has been planned under the recently launched Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP).
The orientation programme is being organised simultaneously across all the districts of the UT. The programme has been designed to be conducted on the first three days of every week. An exhaustive district-specific calendar has been issued by the Government.
The Resource persons for the orientations are Officers and Officials drawn from the Agriculture, Animal/Sheep Husbandry, Horticulture, Sericulture and Fisheries Departments. An innovative tool for describing different schemes/ programmes using short films has been put in place. A total of 49 videos of schemes under HADP and other Centrally Sponsored Schemes is being shown to the farmers across the venues in J&K.
Under LMS, video lectures and textual material is being made available in Kashmiri, Urdu, Dogri and Hindi. Besides, specialised modules on business development and financial management have also been included to ensure that the farmers are not merely trained but become skilful entrepreneurs.
After completion of online courses, the farmers shall be sent for 5-7 days to Krishi Vigyan Kendras in their respective districts for practical hands-on training in their chosen skilling course. On successful completion of the skilling course, the farmers shall be provided certificates by SKUAST J/K.
Additionally, a question-answer session after each screening session of videos is being held to clear the doubts of farmers. The farmers are also being provided with pamphlets of all the schemes in the three languages (Hindi, Urdu and English) in the shape of a booklet, which also contains information about the contact details of all the departments under the agriculture production department of the UT.
The farmers are also being educated about the mode of an application under these schemes using the KISAN SATHI- the IT Dashboard of the schemes developed by APD.
A baseline survey and skill gap study of farmers is also being carried out simultaneously during the Kisan Sampark Abhiyan. The data of around 1.4 lakh farmers has been captured till date using IT tools for having a holistic assessment of the state of Agriculture and farmers in the UT.
