Focus: GS II: Government Policies and Interventions
Why in news?
e-NAM, a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, has won the Platinum Award in the Digital Empowerment of Citizens Category in Digital India Awards 2022 held in New Delhi
e-NAM
- e-NAM was an innovative initiative in agricultural marketing to enhance farmers accessibility digitally to multiple number of markets & buyers and to bring transparency in trade transactions with the intent to improve price discovery mechanism, quality commensurate price realization and also to develop the concept of One Nation One Market for agriculture produce.
- Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is the lead agency forimplementing eNAM under the aegis of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India.
- e-NAM networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities with a vision to promote uniformity in agriculture marketing by streamlining of procedures across the integrated markets, removing information asymmetry between buyers and sellers and promoting real time price discovery based on actual demand and supply.
- This online platform will prove to be a giant leap in reforming the agriculture market in India.
- Farmers are free to register on e-NAM portal and they are uploading their produce for sale online to the traders across all e-NAM mandis and traders can bid for the lots available for sale on e-NAM from any location.
- We have more than 1.66 crore farmers and 1.28 Lakh traders registered on e-NAM platform.
Benefits of e-NAM
- e-NAM would help traders to find and arrange timely movement of produces from mandi to various other locations.
- With this interface, Traders would be able to access more than 7.76 lakh trucks through eNAM Platform.
- This intervention brings immense benefits to our farmers in augmenting their incomes by enabling them to realize competitive & remunerative prices in a transparent manner without incurring additional costs.
- Quality assaying testing facilities is being provided in e-NAM mandis which helps famers in getting prices commensurate with quality of their produce.
- Electronic weighing scales have been provided to accurately weigh the commodities of farmers after bidding on e-NAM platform to bring transparency in weighing, Payment to farmers by traders now can be done through mobile phone using BHIM payment facility.
Digital India Awards
- The Digital India Awards (DIA) is an annual award program organized by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India.
- The goal of the awards is to recognize innovative digital solutions and initiatives in the field of digital governance by government entities and startups.
- The awards are given in several categories, including Digital Empowerment of Citizens, Public Digital Platforms, Digital Initiatives in Collaboration with Start-ups, Digital Initiative for ease of doing business, Data sharing and use for socio-economic development, Digital Initiatives at the grassroots level, and Best Web & Mobile initiatives.
- Winners are recognized with Platinum, Gold, and Silver awards.
