New digital fertilizer marketing scheme through CSC launched

Our Correspondent

MANGALDAI, June 21: The village farmers of Darrang district on January 28, 1894 had created history by raising their voice quite peacefully against the colonial British rulers for which 140 village farmers were brutally shot dead by the British. In this historic background, carrying the legacy of those unsung 140 krishak swahids, Darrang district on Wednesday once again created another history in the field of agriculture as the district has become the first district in the entire country to initiate the facility of purchasing the IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd) fertilizers by the village farmers with the help of digital marketing in a transparent, hassle-free manner through different Common Services Centres (CSC) functional in different rural areas of the district.

The innovative scheme conceived for the first time in India was launched ceremonially by Deputy Commissioner of Darrang, Ashok Kr Barman in a public function organized at the Assam Club auditorium at Kharupetia by the Darrang district administration in collaboration with the Darrang CSC authority.

In his inaugural speech, Deputy Commissioner Barman outlined this unique project as the result of the Prime Minister’s Digital India campaign of expanding and outsourcing the large number of public utility services through the grassroots CSCs and Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) and urged upon the local farmers, particularly of Kharupetia which is known as the Northeast’s hub of vegetable farming, to avail the opportunity of the new project and at the same time to use chemical fertilizers in a judicious manner.

Earlier while explaining the objectives of the project, Additional Deputy Commissioner in-charge of IT and District e-governance of Darrang, Pankaj Chakravorty underlined how the project, the first of its kind in the country, with proper implementation could bring a vast sea of change among the farmers community of Kharupetia in particular and Darrang in general by reducing the alleged practice of black marketing and middleman culture in the existing fertilizer marketing system, and improve the mechanism for the benefits of the progressive farmers.