Kisan Drone: A flight for New India’s Farming Sector

26 May 2014 with his swearing-in as the prime minister of India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan as the 14th Prime Minister of India. And with it, India witnessed a new power dynamic, a world in which the prestige and fall of Indian history were not suppressed but taken as lessons and strategies.

Kisan Drones emerge against the backdrop of India’s ambition to become the world’s drone hub. The Minister of Civil Aviation, Jyotiaditya Scindhia while speaking for the Drone Policy launched in August 2021, considered drones a paradigm shift that will revolutionize the way we interact with the world. The ministry has not only been exceptionally fast but has also fundamentally transformed the policy execution protocol.

A disruptive technology like drones is difficult to regulate and India has taken strides towards it by creating an environment of facilitation, trust and ease. Government departments were encouraged to adopt drones to reimagine their work, create initial demand and bolster the values that make India bet on its startup ecosystem.

3 weeks after the policy announcement, an incentive scheme called the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) was launched. This catalytic scheme makes R&D and manufacturing more attractive, and its economic structure can propel a moonshot. 4 weeks out, A fully automated Digital Sky platform was launched. The number of forms was reduced from 25 to 5. Types of fees reduced from 72 to 4. While also uploading an Interactive airspace map with green, yellow and red zones.

Creating a fully automated Air traffic Control with self-certification and non-intrusive monitoring policy. Also providing a special certification for Authorisation Of Remote Pilot Training Organisation. The Interactive Map is a case study for a new-age corporation where sitting with all horizontal departments i.e Minning, Railway, Defence etc. with sensitive jurisdiction and vertical departments as individual state institutions were finished by 25th September 2021. The Interactive Map was uploaded on the digital sky platform, 30 days after the policy announcement.

The PLI scheme is meant to input 120 crores over the next 3 years in a market that has total revenue of 60 crores to the date of announcement of the said scheme. To support the growth of drone manufacturing and R&D in India. Finally bringing growth in domestic and international markets. Around 60,000 farmer-strong cooperative societies in Maharashtra that grow sugar cane for sugar mills have transitioned to drones as their mode of application of pesticides which narrates the success story of the scheme.

And now these success stories are being supercharged by a 127 crore fund that was released recently by Union minister Of agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar to organize demonstrations on the farmers’ fields in 75000 hectares through 100 KVKs, 75 ICAR institutions and 25 SAUs. The purchase of 300 drones by the ICAR and the establishment of over 1500 Kisan Drone Custom Hiring Centers to provide drone services to farmers. Financial assistance is also provided for the purchase of drones by various institutions and farmers.

Other funding reallocations have also focused on Existing Custom Hiring Centers (CHCs) run by Cooperative Societies of Farmers, FPOs, and Rural entrepreneurs who can receive 40% financial assistance (up to Rs. 4 lakhs) to purchase agricultural drones. Agriculture graduates setting up CHCs are eligible for a 50% grant (up to Rs. 5 lakhs) for drone purchases. The financial support from SMAM, RKVY, or other schemes to set up new CHCs or Hi-tech Hubs aims to make agricultural drone technology more accessible. For promoting use of Kisan Drones, the government is providing 50% or maximum Rs. 5 lakh subsidy to SC-ST, small and marginal, women and farmers of northeastern states to buy drones. For other farmers, financial assistance will be given upto 40 percent or maximum Rs.4 lakh.

However, the new initiative of using drones for pesticide application, such as with Kisan Drone has a potentially high revenue sector seeing that it reduces the cost of pesticide application by half, replacing dependency on labour and enabling efficient use of pesticides.

477 pesticides were given interim approval for drone spraying which accounts for almost all Pesticides sold to farmers except for herbicides. Syngenta was the first private company to get approval from the Central Insecticide board. It shows that the pesticide companies have also made their bets on the adoption of drone technology. This is also apparent from a 10,000 km roadshow across 13 states by deploying 50 drones to make farmers aware of the scope of work. Now collaborating with Startups to enable the drone ecosystem and this could also help enforce the MRL(minimum residual limit) of pesticides that reach the market.

Now that we have seen the low-flying drones and the immense push let’s also look at the high-flying Kissan Drones. SWAMITVA Scheme under the Ministry of Panchayati Raj is using another unique approach to map India with successful trials run in 9 states. The dashboard for Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas or SWAMITVA scheme is again a great page out of the new age of accountability and transparency that is becoming our culture. The land record registry generated is an integrated property validation solution for rural India.

The survey shall be done across the country in a phase-wise manner over the period 2020 -2025. Full coverage of nearly 6.62 lakh villages in India and establishment of an extensive CORS network with 567 CORS stations. CORS or Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). These are essential pieces of strategy to navigate Property Card Preparation and dispute resolution. Other

With an immense scope from crop assessment, digitization of land records and spraying of insecticides and nutrients will enable the ease of farming, produce better crop yield and be a gateway to transparency. This policy has forced an end to decades of despair for the agriculture sector and a flight to futuristic farming has taken off for a technologically driven era in new India’s farming sector.