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New Delhi : Union Science and Technology, Health and Family Welfare and Earth Sciences Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan released the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) Report on “Estimating the economic benefits of Investment in Monsoon Mission and High Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities” at a function at Prithvi Bhavan in New Delhi on November 3, 2020.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Vardhan said that the report has highlighted, “For every rupee spent by the government on the National Monsoon Mission and High-performance Computing programs of the Ministry of Earth Sciences(MoES), the country would gain economic benefits worth fifty rupees, which is 50 times more benefit on the investment over the next five years period”.
NCAER is an independent, not for profit, economic policy research think tank based in New Delhi. The report is based on a study commissioned by M/o Earth Sciences, GoI.
Dr Vardhan said, “One of the most prominent weather services of IMD is the agro-meteorological services for farmers for their day to day operations. IMD in collaboration with Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) provides agro-meteorological advisories twice a week through around 400 district agro-met units for farmers in all districts.”
“The IMD recently started block level weather forecasts and warnings for farmers. At present farmers in 2,000 blocks are receiving advisories. As on November 3, 2020, these forecasts and warnings are disseminated to around 4.3 Crore farmers through various communication channels including Mobile App, Meghdoot, and social media,” he added, according to a PIB release.
Stating that theIndian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) provides ocean state forecasts and warnings to fishermen going out to sea for fishing on daily basis, Dr Vardhan pointed out, “These forecasts and warnings are also disseminated to fishermen through all communication channels. At present around 7 lakh fishermen receive ocean state forecasts and warnings.”
The Minister said that Government of India had launched the Monsoon Mission in 2012 with an objective to improve weather and climate forecasts over the country in all time scales and highlighted that through the monsoon mission, MoES could establish the state of the art dynamical models for weather and climate forecasts.
He also said, “To augment the computing resources, MoES also augmented the HPC facility at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF). The earlier capability of about 1.2 petaflops was upgraded to around 10.0 petaflop HPC facility. The present facility is the best HPC facility in the country and the fourth best among the weather prediction centres around the world, after US, UK and Japan.”
Secretary, M/o Earth Sciences, Dr M Rajeevan, in his address, said that MoES has also developed capabilities for measuring and forecasting air-pollution in Delhi as well as various application tools in diverse sectors including in Agriculture and Energy.
SALIENT ASPECTS of the report-.
• A total of Rs 1,000 crore has been invested in setting up National Monsoon Mission(NMM) and High performance Computing (HPC) facilities by Government of India.
• Objectives of the report: To estimate the economic benefits of the investments made in NMM and HPC, through the income gain to the farmers in rain-fed areas, livestock owners and fishermen by adopting the weather and ocean state forecast respectively. The report also examined the economic benefits with gender perspective
• 173 districts spread across 16 states of India, were selected for the survey (rain-fed)
• A face-to-face survey of 6,098 respondents (including 3,965 farmers, 757 marine fishermen and 1,376 livestock owners) was conducted to gauge the economic impact and an Interactive Voice Response Survey (IVRS) of around 2 lakh respondents was conducted to validate the findings of face-to-face survey.
• 98% farmers made modifications to at least one of the nine critical practices* based on the weather advisories such as changed variety/breed; arranged for storage of harvest; early/delayed harvesting; changed crop; early/delayed sowing; changed schedule of ploughing/land preparation; changed pesticide application schedule; changed fertiliser application schedule; and changed scheduled irrigation. 94 % of these could either avoid loss or saw an increase in income.
• 76% of the livestock owners are using weather information for taking decisions on modification of shed/shelter; vaccination against seasonal disease; and fodder management.
• 82% of fishermen reported using Ocean State Forecast (OSF) advisories every time before venturing into sea.
• 95% of them reported to have avoided empty trips by following OSF advisories, which helped them save Rs 18.25 crore of operational cost by avoiding venturing into the sea.