The Jharkhand Government is going to provide free mobile phones to around 28 lakh farmers in State with an aim to keep the middle men away and also help farmers to have greater information about the market. Those farmers who are registered with eNAM will get Rs 2000 as cash incentive for purchasing the smart phone.

eNAM (National Agriculture Market) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing Agricultural Produce Market Committee mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.

Director, Agriculture, Manjunath Bhajantri, said, “This is for the second time that State Government is going to provide cash incentive of Rs 2000 to farmers for purchasing smart phone. Earlier, the State Government had provided Rs 2000 as cash incentive to around 20,000 farmers for purchasing mobile.” “This time we have targeted to provide the benefits to around 70,000 farmers, however, in due course all the farmers who are registered with eNAM will get the benefits,” added Bhajantri.

Last year, Chief Minister Raghubar Das at an agriculture summit had announced that State Government would provide smart phone to 28 lakh farmers and a separate electric feeder for them for agriculture purpose by 2019/2021. The move will help the farmers know about the market rates and other information relating to agriculture.

With the introduction of eNAM mandis, more and more farmers are turning to online platform for online auction of agri-produce and reaping the benefits of better price discovery and timely payment.

Sources said that in absence of correct information of markets, many a times farmers get trapped to middle men resulting in selling their agriculture produce at throwaway price. With farmers getting Rs 2000 cash incentive for purchasing mobile they can get correct information of market through online.

As Jharkhand has no big agriculture market like Punjab, Haryana, Maharasthra and Andhra Pradesh the farmers of state for sell of their agriculture produce resulting in selling their produce at throwaway prices as farmers have no correct information of market.

An agriculture department official requesting anonymity said, “Smartphone and its applications have come with great innovations. The application have been developed to help farmers reduce stress, acquire relevant information on good agriculture practices, weather, quality inputs, markets tendency and other information relating to agriculture. If a farmer has smart phone than he or she can get updated with markets, weather and other features through eNAM.”

Prior to Jharkhand many states have distributed smart phones to farmers. The Odisha Government too has provided Android Smart phones to farmers.  As many as 2,000 farmers of each district were provided with smart phones for which the State Government spent Rs 3 crore.