Krishi Darshan Started It; Bharat VISTAAR Can Complete It

In 1967, India started a special television show called Krishi Darshan to teach farmers about seeds, soil, and healthy cattle.

It was first shown on a channel called Doordarshan and reached 80 villages near the capital, Delhi.

Back then, many villages did not have extension workers to help farmers, and even today there is only one such worker for every 5,000 farmers.

The show ran for more than 59 years and became the longest-running TV show in Indian history.

But it had a big problem: farmers could only watch and listen, and could not ask questions.

If a pest attacked a farmer's crop on Monday, the advice would only arrive on Thursday.

Later, programs like Rythu Bharosa Kendrams in Andhra Pradesh and Kisan Khidmat Ghars in Jammu & Kashmir set up services closer to villages, so farmers could ask questions nearby.

Now, a new digital system called Bharat VISTAAR works like a helpful layer on which services are built.

One such service, called Saralaben AI, was made by Amul so dairy farmers can call and get instant advice in their own language.

Today, a farmer can ask about crop problems at night in Tamil and get answers from a huge knowledge database, because the system finally listens back.