Devendra Fadnavis says govt working to make state villages self sustainable

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Saturday said his government was working for rural development to ensure villages become self-sustainable. Speaking at the 'Navrashtra Sarpanch Samrat and Agritech' event here, Fadnavis cited the Jalyukt Shivar, a water conservation programme, as a move in this direction.

He said Jalyukt Shivar had made 16,00 villages water-efficient and had been appreciated widely and the credit for this should go to village chiefs and gram sabhas. He gave the example of drought-prone Latur which had deployed only two water tankers this time because of the success of water-saving works there.

"Now the number of tankers have reduced, irrigated lands have increased and agriculture production has increased due to assured irrigation," Fadnavis claimed. He informed that with the assistance from World Bank, the government has undertaken the MahaAgri project to provide assistance to farmers for sowing and marketing.

"We are working on capacity building of Seva Sahakari Sanstha in 10,000 villages and converting them into commercial institutions for agri business. Nearly 32 lakh farmers will be taught agricultural skills," he said. "With all these initiatives, we are trying to start agri businesses in villages to address the issue of getting proper market price for agricultural produce," said Fadnavis.

He said artificial intelligence (AI) had been introduced in six districts to experiment with agriculture, including digitisation, to help farmers. These moves included setting up automatic weather stations in 2000 circles to help farmers increase crop production, he added.

(With inputs from agencies.)