Kisan Call Centre
The
Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC), Ministry of Agriculture,
Govt. of India launched Kisan Call Centers on January 21, 2004 across the
country to deliver extension services to the farming community.
The
purpose of these call centers is to respond to issues raised by farmers,
instantly, in the local language. There are a call centers for every state
which are expected to handle traffic from any part of the country. Queries
related to agriculture and allied sectors are being addressed through these
call centers. At present 25 Kisan Call Centres are functioning throughout
different States of the Country and answering the farmers queries in 22 local
dialects from 6 am to 10 pm on all 7 days a week..
A
farmer from any part of the State can contact the Kisan Call Centre by dialing
the toll free Telephone No. 1551 or 1800-180-1551 and
present their problems/queries related to farming. The calls are picked up at KCCs located in 25 locations
across the country by agricultural graduates (at Level–I, KCC) who after a
short welcome message take down the basic information about the farmer and the
details of the query. The caller’s details, the query and the reply are
fed simultaneously into the computer database maintained on a server, which is
used to generate Management Information System (MIS) reports. This
database is made available to the policy makers at the national and state level
at regular interval. Current records speak that 98 percent calls are answered
at Level I. In case the Level – I expert is not able to answer the question, he
forwards the call to the concerned Level-II experts through call conferencing
mode.
The Level–II experts
are the Subject Matter Specialists (SMSs), located in State Agricultural
University/ ICAR Institutes/Departments like Agriculture, Horticulture, and
Animal Husbandry etc. Level-II experts are available on all working days during
working hours. If the calls are related to policy matters and/ or could not be
answered by neither L-I or L-II, then the questions are forwarded to Level III
through e-mail and the answers are passed on to the farmers by post or through
a return call.
Monitoring And Review
For
successful functioning of Kisan Call Centers, there is a need to monitor and
review the various activities of the KCC by the Nodal Institution on regular
basis. The Nodal Institution is responsible for documenting the daily
activities of the Kisan Call Center at various levels on farmers’ queries and
their resolution, availability of Subject Matter Specialists, call dropouts and
their transfer to Level-III and response to the farmers within 72 hours. The
Nodal Institution will also organize fortnightly meetings with the Heads of
Departments of Response Centers for first 6 months to ensure the proper
identification and placement and changes if necessary of Level-II functionaries
and resolution of the queries shared with Subject Matter Specialists and their
documentation. Subsequently, these meetings will be held every month in
Response Centers on rotation.
The
Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC), Ministry of Agriculture
(MOA), Govt. of India will review the functioning of all the Kisan Call Centers
with the Heads of Nodal Institutions every month to start with for first six
months and subsequently for every quarter in each of the Nodal Institution on
rotation basis.
Documentation
And Reporting
The
Nodal Institution is responsible for documentation and reporting. The Officer
In-charge of the Nodal Institution will gather the reports from the Kisan Call
Center / Response Centers and prepare a consolidated statement on farmers’
queries and answers, crop / enterprise-wise, along with the resolutions given
at Level-III and report to the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation
(DAC), Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Govt. of India through e-mail on
fortnightly basis.
All
the proceedings of the Kisan Call Center will be documented by each of the
Nodal Institution and shared with other Kisan Call Centers for preparing a
database on crop / enterprise-wise and also to prepare Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs).
IKSL-
Encouraged
by the popularities of Kisan Call Centres , a Company IFFCO KISAN SANCHAR
LIMITED was formed in April 2007 by the Indian Formers Fertilizer Corporation
Limited (IFFCO) in joint venture with Telecom provider Bharti Airtel and a
NBFC, Star Banking Company with a purpose to promote rural communication with
value added services, in which Agriculture graduates from Rural areas
encouraged to establish call centres through which IKSL used to educate farmers
and provide useful information and provide livelihood to the unemployed youth
through selling fertiliser/telecom product through these centres. In this
model, IFFCO provide content support, Telecom Company Bharti Air Tel provide
telecom infrastructure and NBFC used to extend financial support to farmers is
required. As per IKSL annual report, the company broadcast 86096 message to
active1,00,783 VAS users, answered 76573 queries, arranged 504 phone in expert
program, 653 quizz program and also generated revenue of 2313 million with a
profit of 106.8 million.
The Department of
Agriculture entrusted to operate the Kisan Call centres to IKSL wef from 10th
February 2012. The IKSL further upgraded the Kisan Kall Centres infrastructure
and same was re-launched wef 1st May 2013. The restructure KCC are
now more professional with
following technology innovations-
i)
Voice/media Gateway (IPPAX based decentralised system)
ii)
Dedicated MPLS leased lines network with
dedicated bandwidth.
iii)
SMS to farmers providing a gist of
advisories given to them on phones.
iv)
Voice mail system for recording farmers
queries during idle time of KCC or during
call lines busy, with provision for call back to callers.
Presently
8-9 lakh calls are handled by the Kisan Call Centres in a Year.
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