Govt launches Kisan Rin Portal and weather WINDS manual

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday launched Kisan Rin portal along with Weather Information Network Data Systems (WINDS) manual in Delhi. 

The portal will serve as an integrated hub to offer a comprehensive view of farmer data, loan disbursement specifics, interest subvention claims, and scheme utilisation progress.

The finance minister also unveiled the Ghar Ghar KCC campaign to achieve saturation of the scheme. The campaign is being launched on October 1, 2023.

With the launch of the new portal, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked banks to give all relevant data by December 31, 2023, for the Kisan Rin Portal.

At the launch of the new portal, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman expressed her concern over the slow progress of computerisation in Regional Rural Banks (RRBs). She also urged RRB management to ramp up the process to strengthen credit delivery in rural areas.

There is still a lot of work to do in digitising RRBs and cooperative banks, she said after launching the 'Kisan Rin Portal' and Weather Information Network Data Systems (WINDS) manual in New Delhi.

Cooperative banks are not equally endowed, and their financial health varies, she said, adding ramping up capacity in the sector is taking place under the Ministry of Cooperation headed by Home Minister Amit Shah.

The cooperative bank digitisation would happen with the necessary speed, she said.

However, she said, "I am more concerned about RRBs, their digitisation and computerisation. Therefore, if they didn't have it, extending phone bank facility...or internet banking facility...won't work out".

She also highlighted that a lot of work is pending, and the Department of Financial Services is sensitising them to achieve computerisation at a fast pace.

Finance Minister was also surprised by the huge gap between sanction of funds and their disbursement by cooperative banks. She also asked officials to find out the reason for the wide gap between sanctions and disbursement.

However, the difference between sanction and disbursement is low in the case of scheduled commercial banks.

WINDS portal

The FM also unvieled a manual of the Weather Information Network Data Systems (WINDS) portal. The portal was launched in July. It leverages advanced weather data analytics to provide stakeholders with actionable insights on weather for informed decision-making in agriculture.

This comprehensive manual also provides stakeholders with an in-depth understanding of the portal's functionalities, data interpretation, and effective utilisation, empowering farmers, policymakers and various agricultural entities to make well-informed choices.

The portal also addressed the need of parametric crop insurance scheme of the ministry, in addition to non-scheme parametric insurance programmes for crop risk mitigation and disaster risk reduction and mitigation being run by the insurance industry.