The government, in association with the Karnataka milk federation, will introduce on the spot payment for farmers in milk societies, on a pilot basis in Bidar district.
The initiative stems from the fact that the state government is giving away cows and buffaloes, under Krishi Bhagya scheme to below poverty line farm families. The scheme aims at increasing the income of rural households. Officials are saying they will use hi-tech tools to monitor the process. KMF now deposits money every week, though farmers routinely complain their payment is delayed beyond four weeks, according to animal husbandry department officers.
“Because we are funding the scheme, we want to monitor the whole gamut of processes from maintenance of the cows, its reproduction, milk yield, and whether the farmer is benefited monetarily,” Anurag Tewari, deputy commissioner, said. The animals will be in the name of the woman of the house, either the wife, mother, daughter or daughter- in- law.
Beneficiary farmers will get the milch animals that have radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. A data centre to be set up in Bidar will monitor these for a year, to see that the farmers don’t sell the animals. The tags will also avoid chances of irregularities like the same animals being used to seek loans as surety or mortgage item.
Farmers will also carry home a smart card, the size of a credit card that allows them to communicate easily with the computer in the milk society. The society in turn will have a system to record data of all milk suppliers. The system of receiving, measuring and testing the quality of milk will be automated. This will send SMS to farmers about the quantity and quality of milk supplied on that day. In two hours, the money will be electronically deposited to the beneficiary accounts, Mr Tewari said.
The tenders with technical specifications have been created and floated. Three prospective companies have bid for the project. The processing of bids started from Wednesday. The first batch of animals will be distributed on September 17, Eswhar Khandre, district in charge minister said. He feels the scheme has the potential to be replicated across the state. The minister said that as a pilot project, they had merged funds from Pashu Bhagya and the KMF’s easy loan scheme to farmers. This helped us get 3,300 animals, that include native breeds with exotic breeds.
