‘Raj Kisan Saathi’ Project

Context:

• The ‘Raj Kisan Saathi’ project has received the esteemed national CIPS (Center for Innovations in Public Systems) Innovation Award 2024.
• This award was given by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha of Jammu & Kashmir at a grand ceremony in Srinagar.

Main Features of the Portal :

• The ‘Raj Kisan Saathi’ is an integrated online portal, a single-window system designed around the idea of ‘Ease of Doing Farming.’
• The portal provides farmers with simple access to services like Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), various schemes, licensing, quality control, and digital advice.
• The portal makes more than 120 modules from agricultural and related departments available through a completely digital, paperless, and transparent system.
• Rajasthan is the first state in India to have developed such an integrated system.

Significance :

• This system has saved 1,320 tons of paper, increased DBT payments by 33 times, allowed for real-time tracking of applications, and reduced fraud through digitization.
• New features like geo-tagged verification, AI/ML-based crop disease management, online licensing, and delivering seed mini-kits to farmers have made agricultural services more efficient and transparent.
• The project also promotes the concept of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance.’

Other Key Points :

• The ‘Raj Kisan Saathi’ project has also received several other notable honors, including the Skoch Awards, the National e-Governance Award 2023-24 (Silver Category), and was a finalist for the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration.
• Officials from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have shown interest in studying this model to adopt it.