bio social
Facebook emerges
as new dialogue
forum for agripolicy in India
T
hese days there is hardly anybody
from a family who is not on the
facebook. Even in the rural areas,
with the fast changing
information technology scenario coupled
with the easy access to mobile phones,
both the young and old have started to use
social media networking for various
purposes. Therefore, given the huge
population in India, social media presents
an easy opportunity to connect at least
with a fairly larger chunk of population.
Perhaps it was in the same backdrop, the
union agriculture and farmers welfare
minister, Mr Radha Mohan Singh through
his ministry, organized
a direct
dialogue with the people, across the
nation through facebook on May 30, 2016.
The minister said he took questions
related to agriculture and Ministry and
answered on face book between 11am and
12 pm. Mr Singh added that 450 queries
came on facebook and 100 were
responded instantly. He said that
responses of remaining questions are
being communicated. The minister said
that over 30, 000 people saw it on the face
book and we received 600 comments till 3
pm in the evening.
Based on the dialogue, has said that future
of agriculture in India is great and people
are very much hopeful about it. minister
said that people from all over country
The power of social media is fast
catching up with the union cabinet.
While many ministers are already doing
it, the agriculture minister, Mr Radha
Mohan Singh is the latest to club as he
recently interacted with people across
the nation through facebook
By SACHIN ARYA
asked questions and the prominent feature
of this dialogue was that all of the queries
were related to the agricultural sector. In
asking questions people seemed to be
serious, and they asked innocently and
with honesty. He said that after taking
questions, it can be stated that people are
very keen about agriculture and future of
agriculture in India is great.
Mr R M Singh said that these questions
reflect the status of various agriculture
schemes being implemented in the
country and advantages of the schemes are
reaching to the farmers or not. Minister
said that the implementation of the
agriculture schemes takes place through
states. “Therefore, based on the questions
asked we get to know extent of agricultural
progress in states, he stated.
Facebook getting popular in rural
setting too?
There have been many instances in India
where agriculture officers have used the
facebook for generating interest through
formation of farmer groups. Farmers
themselves too have taken the initiatives.
An as example, the turmeric farmers in
Maharashtra came up with a solution after
seeing the prices drop because of
oversupply. They created a group on
facebook where they invited farmers from
the region to join and decide together how
much to produce to maintain the demand
FACEBOOK IN INDIA:
● Close to 11 crore Indian
users i.e. 9% of total
population.
● Indian user base after USA
and Brazil. No doubt any
government would get
serious about its utility.
● The key government
agency under ministry of
agriculture, Indian Council
of Agriculture has close to
1 lakh 18 thousand likes
for turmeric. They have also used facebook
to get in contact with farmers in other
regions and plan boycotts when they feel
the prices in certain markets are not right.
Given that there are more mobile phones
than computers in India, most of the
farmers use their smart phones to connect
to facebook.
Meanwhile visibly satisfied at the
experience, the agriculture minister
mentioned that he will log into the
facebook quite often for direct dialogue
with public. Mr Singh said that hereon he
would have direct question - answers
session on this popular social media
platform on regular basis. Well we too will
log in to catch up with you Mr Minister.
BIOVOICENEWS.COM
09