As promised earlier, the State Govenrment is all set to distribute free mobile phones under the Digital Bazar Scheme to leading farmers on Tuesday.
According to Cooperation Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik would launch the scheme at a State level function to be held at Bhubaneswar. As many as 5,000 farmers from targeted 20,000, covering all the districts, would be given free mobile phones in the first phase.
The function will be held at the Exhibition Ground in the forenoon, which would be attended by Agriculture Minister Debi Mishra, Bhubaneswar lok Sabha Member Prasanna Kumar Patsani, MlAs Ashok Chandra Panda, Bijoy Mohanty and Bhagirathi Badajena too.
Arukh said Odisha is the second State in the country after Haryana to implement the scheme. Finance Minister Prasanna Acharya in his first ever Agriculture Budget had announced the scheme for the lead farmers.
Each mobile to be distributed for free will cost Rs 1,000. Arukh said the objective of the scheme is to empower the farmers for proper planning of crops and better price realization for their produce under the Digital Mandi Scheme, a Government of India Project, which has been developed by the IIT, Kanpur.
He said the farmers would have to register themselves with the Digital Mandi to get information on market prices of various agricultural produce in different markets of the country at their hand instantly through the mobile phones in form of voice call and SMS. The scheme would be implemented by the Regulated Market Committees (RMCs). In order to update themselves, the farmers can also access the information on market prices of agricultural produce at any time in the Government of India's agmarknet.nic.in portal.