Virtual agri-training: Bengal model to be implemented across India

KOLKATA: Bengal has shown the way to the entire country with the Centre allowing implementation of the model developed in the state across the country to provide training to build technical competency in agriculture in virtual mode when conventional form of training exercises weren't feasible due to the prevailing Covid pandemic.

The necessity of continuing the training was felt to avoid imbalance in agricultural inputs like fertilisers and pesticides due to lack of proper channelisation of information on regular updates on the same to the grassroot level of the country's agrarian society.

The National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), an autonomous organisation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, has been running one-year diploma course to agri-input (fertiliser and pesticide) dealers as majority of these dealers do not have formal agricultural education despite being the prime source of agri-related information to the country's farmers community.

The course is implemented through State Agricultural Management and Extension Training Institutes (SAMETIs), which act as an autonomous body at the state level with all necessary support by the state government.

Since 2003, the programme has been running successfully without any glitch. But it received a jolt with setting in of the first wave of Covid pandemic in March 2020. The reason being conventional form of training with around 40 people gathering at one training centre was not possible.

Officials of SAMETI in Bengal realised that the participants in the programme were gradually getting detached from the learning process that plays a crucial role in development in the state's agriculture sector. As a result, it proposed to implement the virtual class room for the same and even submitted a "model training module" for the same. But it was not initially accepted citing various reasons mainly internet connectivity issues in extreme rural parts of the country.

Without giving up, SAMETI in Bengal took up the virtual programme in a workshop format as no clearance was then received and even invited the MANAGE authorities after a couple of months to be a part of one of the virtual workshops. Finding it effective, the MANAGE authorities proposed the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare to allow its implementation across the country, said an official of SAMETI in Bengal. The participants take classes virtually using their mobile phones sitting at their houses with proper dissemination of information of training schedule through all 30 training centres across the state.

The state Agriculture minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay said: "This is a matter of pride that Bengal again has shown a way to the nation and most importantly in the agriculture sector to which of utmost importance to our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The move will benefit the agrarian society on a large scale."