NEW DELHI: Hundreds of thousands of Indian villages will become climate resilient this week with the launch of a system to provide weather forecasts at their doorstep five days a week.
The system will be formally launched on 24th October by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) in the presence of Rajiv Ranjan Singh, the Minister of Panchayati Raj and Jitendra Singh the Minister of State for Science, Technology and Earth Sciences.
India has 644,131 villages according to data with the Registrar-General of India. Most of these villages will be covered by the new system, “Gram-Panchayat-level Weather Forecasting”. Gram Panchayat in Indian languages means ‘village councils’.
In addition to taking weather forecasts to the doorsteps of villagers five days a week, they can check hourly weather forecasts through the ‘My Panchayat’ mobile app, Gram Manchitra (village map), a spatial planning tool that provides geospatial insights and the Panchayati Raj Ministry’s digital
platform, e-GramSwaraj, which means village self-government.
Indian villages have mobile connectivity of 95.7 percent, the government informed Parliament on 13th December last year. This makes the new system accessible to most Indian villagers.
‘As weather patterns become increasingly unpredictable, the introduction of weather forecasting at the Gram Panchayat level will serve as a crucial tool in safeguarding agricultural livelihoods and enhancing rural preparedness against natural disasters,’ the Indian government’s Press Information Bureau said today.
‘Gram Panchayats will now receive daily updates on temperature, rainfall, wind speed, and cloud cover, empowering them to make critical decisions in agriculture, such as planning sowing, irrigation, and harvesting activities,’ it said.
Source: Emirates News Agency