New Delhi: A dedicated television channel for farmers, Kisan TV, will be launched on the occasion of Baisakhi, which marks the start of the harvest season in Punjab and neighbouring states, in April.
The government announced the launch date of this channel in its 2015-16 budget papers, tabled in Parliament on Saturday. “Soft launch of the channel is proposed from March 23 and firm launch is expected on April 13-14,” it said.
The channel, dedicated to agriculture and allied sectors, will disseminate real-time inputs to farmers on new farming techniques, water conservation and organic farming among other information.
The Narendra Modi government had proposed such a channel on Doordarshan (DD) in its last budget in July last year, and had earmarked Rs 100 crore for it. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, who is also minister for information and broadcasting, provided Rs 45 crore as “grants-in-aid” to Prasar Bharati – the country’s public service broadcaster — for the ‘Kisan’ channel in this year’s budget.
Earlier, the I&B ministry had crowd-sourced ideas on the contours and content of Kisan TV which will be one of the key 24-hour channels in DD’s kitty.
Quiz shows for farmers, sharing best farm practices in different parts of the country, a bottoms-up approach involving agriculturists, inviting programming suggestions from general public and real-time interaction with experts and farm scientists were some of the ideas that came up in the process.
Prasar Bharati currently runs ‘Krishi Darshan’ programme on DD1. It is one of the longest running programmes on DD. It was launched on January 26, 1967.
