Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension

ICT INITIATIVES IN ANIMAL HUSBANDRY AND DAIRYING

Some of the successful ICT initiatives taken up under different projects in India are

• The Warna Wired Village Project providing Internet access to cooperative societies spread in 70 villages of Maharashtra. The aim is to provide information to the villagers by establishing networked booths in the villages.
• The Information Villages Project of M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation has established a hub of the information network, in Villianur village ( Pondicherry) to cater to the information needs of the rural people. It is aimed at bringing the benefits of modern ICTs to rural families in Pondichery.
• The Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, Government of India has already established a Local Area Network (LAN) with 230 nodes at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi with Internet access through NICNET gateway. An ICT Learning (e-Learning) Centre has also been established to provide on line internet access.
• The Dairy Information and Services Kiosk(DISK) is one of the successful initiatives taken up by Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd ( GCMFL) with the help of Indian Institute of Ahmedabad. ‘DISK’ model includes a complete history of milk cattle owned by the member farmers. The details such as the breed and a history of diseases,inoculation, and artificial insemination are maintained in the system. It is being used at milk collection centers and in cooperatives to measure butter fat content of milk, test the quality of the milk and promptly make the payment to the farmers. It has resulted in the removal of incentives to those who adulterate milk, reduced the time for payments from 10 days to less than 5minutes and instilled the confidence in farmers on cooperative set up.
• The National Dairy Development Board has established “ AKASHGANGA” which provides total integrated solution for automatic milk collection.
• The Central Institute for Research on Goats ( CIRG) has developed E-mail Conference System for Goat Outreach on its goat-nic.in server using free software called 'majordoma' which is available onwww.greatcircle.com on a free Linux operating system. Three e-mail conferencing systems, viz., [e-mail].,[e-mail] and [e-mail], have been launched by the institute to help information inflow among technologists, farmers,development officers and planners.
• Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University has developed multi media self learning modules on various aspects of livestock, poultry and fish production and installed the same in the information kiosks available in all the extension centres and constituent colleges spread through out the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu.
• Under Animal Health Project funded by Department for International Development(DFID), Rajiv Gandhi college of Veterinary and Animal Sciences,(RAGACOVAS) Pondicherry in collaboration with University of Reading, UK,has designed an interactive touch screen information Kiosk. It has information on important cattle diseases in addition to management of cattle and methods of acquiring information. Illiterate livestock keepers can access the needed information on cattle management with the touch of the screen which had text and pictures with sound back-up. RAGACOVAS also developed an Information kiosk on management of goats for the benefit of the goat keepers under Rural Innovation Fund project in collaboration with MSSRF.