In July 2015, the Union Govt. Of India under the leadership of Hon. PM Narendra Modi embarked on an ambitious mission of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Titled ‘Digital India’, this initiative is centered on 3 key areas – Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen, On-demand Governance & Services and Digital Empowerment of Citizens, and is aimed at transforming the entire Public Services ecosystem through effective use of Information Technology.
As the clamour for Digital Transformation began earnestly in various Centre and State departments, it became critical to identify the most successful eGovernance projects as an inspiration and benchmark for others. The concept of ‘Gems Of Digital India Awards’ was thus conceived to identify and felicitate the best of the best eGovernance projects in India.
After a painstaking research over 30 long months, the Gems Of Digital India Awards team identified a mammoth list of 1600 eGovernance projects and rigorously scrutinised each one of them on 4 key parameters – Innovative Design, Holistic Approach, Tangible Impact and Long-term Sustainability, to finally confer the Awards to 41 projects.
The Unified (Agriculture) Market Platform (UMP) – Rashtriya e Market Services Pvt. Limited (ReMS – joint venture company of Govt. of Karnataka and NeML) were conferred the Gems Of Digital India Award in the ‘Jury’s Choice’ category for it’s successful implementation of Agricultural market reforms to increase farmers’ income in Karnataka’s APMC markets. The UMP project was the only Joint Govt. eGovernance project to win the Gems Of Digital India 2017 Award.
Seamlessly running across 157 Mandis in Karnataka, the UMP which is an initiative of ReMS helped the Karnataka farmers earn 38% more income from the sale of their produce through the UMP. This stupendous achievement was also recently lauded by NITI Aayog in it’s report on ‘Doubling Farmer Incomes’ and the UMP was praised for bringing in transparency in price discovery, operational efficiency, cost savings and increase in realizations for the entire ecosystem of Farmers, Traders, Mandis and Govt. Agencies in Karnataka.
ReMS would be deepening it’s reforms in the APMC markets to further enhance the market efficiencies in a bid to put more money in the farmers’ pockets.
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