Land shortage cripples Agriculture Ministry’s weather network rollout

An ambitious public-private partnership project by an Agriculture Ministry body to install automatic rain gauges and automatic weather stations in States is proceeding at a crawl, with completion rates in the single digits and at least a year behind deadline. Over 96% of planned sensors are yet to be installed.

The reason, companies tasked with the implementation say, is a paucity of land to install these weather stations and an alleged “retrospective” insistence by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) that these sensors be set up on the ground rather than on rooftops.

The Weather Information Network and Data System (WINDS) is a programme to set up a nationwide network of weather sensors to supply hyper-local weather data. This is mainly to aid in computing insurance estimates and payouts under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). It is run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, and executed through the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC). 

Over 50,000 sensors planned

Under the WINDS network, the States, through their implementing private partners, are required to set up the sensor network. The Hindu could confirm that three companies — Skymet Weather Services; Ingen Technologies Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weather Risk Management Services; and Azista Industries — were collectively asked to instal 1,197 automatic weather stations (AWSs) and 49,313 automatic rain gauges (ARGs), or about 50,500 sensors in all. 

An ARG measures rainfall only, though about 10% of ARGs at the gram panchayat level also carry a temperature sensor. An AWS measures rainfall along with air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and wind direction. Data from these sensors flow into data centres run by government agencies, to prepare hourly, daily, and fortnightly forecasts.

Majority of proposed sites rejected

According to documents viewed by The Hindu, Uttar Pradesh was to have installed 27,487 ARGs — over half the ARG target — followed by Uttarakhand (7,983), Odisha (7,286), Assam (2,140), and Himachal Pradesh (about 3,550).