Integration of Services with Kisaan SMS Portal

SMS Portal for farmers was inaugurated on Jul 16, 2013 by the Hon'ble President of India. Till date, more than 152 crore SMSs have been sent to farmers by different departments/organizations of the Government of India and State Governments in agriculture and allied sector. So far, these messages have consisted primarily of advisories to farmers based on his / her location & selection of crops or practices in agriculture and allied sector.

A large number of web-based transactional services are being provided to farmers in various States & also by organisations/departments of the Government of India. These range from issuance of soil health cards, provision of subsidized agricultural inputs and analysis of pests/diseases etc. Quite a few such services are in pipe-line under National e-Governance Plan-Agriculture or otherwise.

However, in most of the existing services, result or outcome of service is provided to the farmer either through the internet or as a printed document. Because of abysmally low internet penetration in rural areas the farmers have to personally visit office or these reports are sent by post to them. All these result in delays & involve expenditure. Considering deep penetration of mobile telephony in rural areas, SMS mode of delivery is most effective. Although, this is being used in some cases but huge expenditure is being incurred in sending these messages through private gateways.

Since most of these services are web-based, an interface has been developed to send the results/reports of various services on mobile phone of the farmers with a 6 digit short code KRISHI. The service can be easily integrated with the existing national Kisaan SMS Portal. With this all SMSs will be sent to the farmers without any cost to the department concerned. These transactions will also be included in the e-Taal portal of Department of Electronics and information Technology (DeitY), Government of India, which counts electronic transactions happening through various online services of both State and Central Government applications.

State Governments and all other departments may start using KSeva for providing services in an efficacious and pervasive manner. Methodology of linking service to Kisaan SMS Portal is detailed as under:

1. The Department/Organization concerned registers on URL http://mkisan.gov.in/ksewa/registrationForm.aspx through a designated officer.
2. This officer is to be authorized by Head of the Department or Organization. Scanned copy of such authorization needs to be uploaded on registration interface.
3. The administrator of the Portal will approve after making such verification as may be deemed necessary.
4. The User ID and Password chosen by the Registering Officer will be used for logging into the service. The password can be changed as often as required.
5. While approving the registration request, Authentication Code for Integration will be sent to the end user by e-mail and SMS. The service can be linked with the Kisaan SMS Portal using the authentication code downloaded. Technical documents for integration of service have been prepared for C# and JAVA and the same are available under "How to Integrate" tab. You can access this tab after login.
6. White-listing of the server where application is hosted with Kisaan SMS Portal is required to be done. White-listing will be allowed on this end only when complete security audit of the application to be linked has been done.
7. To clarify any doubts, please contact Mr Manish Saxena, Consultant (ICT), NegP-A PMU +91-23381207.