Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

Best rice cooker under ₹3000

New Delhi, Feb 17 () Use of soil health card has helped farmers reduce substantially the cost of production and achieve higher production, thereby increasing farm income up to Rs 30,000 per acre, depending on the crop, according to a latest government study.The study, conducted by the National Productivity Council (NPC) in 76 districts of 19 states - covering 170 soil testing labs and 1,700 farmers, has been released on the completion of five year of the government scheme.Soil health card provides information to farmers on nutrient status of their soil along with recommendation on appropriate dosage of nutrients to be applied for improving its health and fertility."In absence of the soil health cards, it was acknowledged by the farmers that adequate quantity of fertilizers and micro-nutrients were not being applied by them earlier and this had affected the productivity of crops," the study said.According to the study, savings on fertilisers and increase in production led to increased income of the farmers.For instance, there was Rs 25,000-30,000 per acre increase in in come from tur, around Rs 25,000 per acre from sunflower, Rs 12,000 per acre from cotton, Rs 10,000 per acre from groundnut, Rs 4,500 per acre from paddy and Rs 3,000 per acre from potato, it said.Application of fertilisers as per the recommendation of soil health cards led to savings in nitrogen fertilisers like urea, thereby resulted in reduction in cost of cultivation.In case of rice, the cost of cultivation was reduced by 16-25 per cent and savings of nitrogen was found to be around 20kg/acre. In pulses, there was 10-15 per cent reduction in cultivation cost and savings of 10kg/acre urea.Similarly in oilseeds, the reduction was 10-15 per cent and savings on nitrogen was 9kg/acre in sunflower, around 23kg/ acre in groundnut and around 30 kg/acre in castor.Among cash crops, the reduction in cotton was 25 per cent and and savings on nitrogen fertiliser was around 35 kg/ acre, while in potato the saving on nitrogen fertiliser was 46 kg per acre, the study added.Stating that judicious use of fertilisers also resulted in increased production of crops, the study showed that there was 10-20 per cent increase in production of paddy and 10-15 per cent in wheat and jowar.There was 10-30 per cent rise in production of pulses, 40 per cent jump in oilseeds and 10-20 per cent in cotton production, it said.Under the scheme, soil health card is issued farmers every 2 years so as to provide a basis to address nutritional deficiencies in fertilization practises. Since launch of the scheme, the card has been issued twice.In the first cycle from 2015 to 2017, 10.74 crore soil health cards were distributed to farmers. In the cycle-II (2017-19), 11.69 crore soil health cards have been distributed to farmers across the country.Instead of sample collection at grid level, the government has started a pilot project from this fiscal onwards to collect samples at 'individual farm holding'.Under the pilot, one village per block is adopted for land holding-based soil sampling, testing and organisation of larger number of demonstrations up to a maximum number of 50 demonstrations (1 hectare each) for each adopted village.So far, 6,954 villages have been identified by the states in which against the target of 26.83 lakh samples, 20.18 lakh samples have been collected, 14.65 lakh samples have been analyzed and 13.54 lakh cards have been distributed to farmers, the government said.Apart from this 2,46,968 demonstrations and 6,951 farmer melas have been approved for states and union territories.The government also mentioned that the soil analyzing capacity in the country has increased from 1.78 crore to 3.33 crore samples per annum in short period of five years.So far, 429 new static soil testing labs (STLs), 102 New Mobile STLs, 8752 Mini STLs have been provided. Village level soil testing facilities (VLSTLS) by agri-entrepreneurs have also been promoted and so far 1,562 VLSTLs have been sanctioned and strengthening of 800 existing STLs have been approved to states/UTs under the scheme.Soil health card provides two sets of fertiliser recommendations for six crops, including recommendations of organic manures. Farmers can also get suggestions for additional crops on demand. They can print the card on their own from soil health card (SHC) portal.SHC portal has farmers database of both the cycles and is available in 21 languages for the benefit of the farmers. LUX BAL

Soil health card boosts farm income up to Rs 30K/acre depending on crops: Study

How small-town Maine embraced a family that fled the Taliban

This is the second in a series of articles analysing the impact of 5G mobile technology on people's everyday lives. In Hangzhou, capital of eastern China's Zhejiang province and one of the country's major technology hubs, evidence of the city's smart infrastructure can be gleaned from how its public services function. Police officers are notified of major car accidents soon after they happen, traffic lights automatically adjust to changes in the volume of vehicles on the road, and in emergencies, fire trucks and ambulances are not stopped by a single red light until they arrive at the scene. Those advances are enabled by Hangzhou's City Brain project, a cloud computing and artificial intelligence-driven urban traffic-management system. It covers a total area of 420 square kilometres, which is about the size of seven Manhattans - referring to the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. When 5G mobile services start to roll out worldwide from next year, smart cities such as Hangzhou are expected to get smarter as the next-generation wireless technology helps industries realise the full potential of the internet of things (IoT). "From 2G to 3G to 4G, all of them serve people," said Cui Kai, a Beijing-based IoT analyst with technology research firm IDC. "But 5G, from the beginning of its infrastructure design, has the internet of things in mind." IoT envisions a self-configuring, adaptive and complex network that interconnects physical objects, each containing embedded technology to communicate, gather data and interact with mobile applications or other networks. The stakes are high for industries around the world, as global spending on IoT is forecast to exceed US$1 trillion in 2022, up from an estimated US$745 billion this year, according to IDC. It said adoption of IoT was happening across industries, in governments and in consumers' daily lives. Data generated by connected devices is now helping companies run more efficiently and gain insight into business processes, while consumers' access to data is changing how they are informed about the status of households, vehicles and family members, as well as their own health and fitness. "The next chapter of IoT is just beginning, as we see a shift from digitally enabling the physical to automating and augmenting the human experience with a connected world," said Carrie MacGillivray, vice-president for IoT and mobility at IDC, in a recent report. That shift is likely to become apparent as 5G networks are rolled out around the world. With peak data rates up to 20 times faster than 4G, 5G will serve as "the connective tissue" for IoT, autonomous cars, smart cities and new mobile applications - providing the backbone for the industrial internet, according to a Deloitte report. On the consumer side, 5G smartphone users will be able to send high-resolution 4K video within a few seconds, and both video games and apps based on augmented and virtual reality technologies will be seamless. The 5G networks will also be able to support the growing number of connected devices globally, from fitness-tracking watches to internet-linked televisions and smart speakers at home. The International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency overseeing development of the "IMT 2020" global standard for 5G, said the new wireless technology would support 1 million connected devices per square kilometre; 1 millisecond latency (representing the nearly instant time a packet of data takes to get from one point to another); greater efficiency in terms of power and use of radio spectrum; and a peak data download rate of up to 20 gigabits per second. <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3006582/power-change-world-heres-why-us-and-china-are-fighting-over-our-5g">With the power to change the world, here's why the US and China are fighting over our 5G future</a> The agency works in tandem with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, an international collaboration of seven telecoms standard development organisations, which has approved the much-anticipated global technology specifications for 5G. That has kicked off work on initial deployments this year by some of the world's largest telecoms network operators. At the crux of many IoT applications is latency. For a YouTube viewer, it means the delay between clicking the play button and the moment when the video starts streaming. 5G networks will provide better latency than the average 50 milliseconds on 4G networks, enabling IoT applications that require near instantaneous data transmission such as remote surgery. In March, China conducted its first remote surgery using robots with the support of a 5G network deployed by telecoms operator China Mobile and supplied by Huawei Technologies, according to state media. During the three-hour procedure, a surgeon implanted a neurostimulator device into the brain of a Parkinson's disease patient in Beijing with the aid of robotic arms, which were remotely controlled about 3,000km away. Remote surgeries are widely expected to enable more doctors to help their colleagues at smaller institutions or in disaster areas. Low latency is also key to the smooth operation of autonomous vehicles. Sensors in a self-driving car gather information - from road conditions and nearby obstacles to traffic accidents along the way - and send the data to the car's on-board computer or to a cloud computing platform to make instant decisions. Seamless machine-to-machine communication would also be an important asset in military operations. A group of soldiers, for example, can wear smart wristwatches to know each other's location and vital signs as they operate in a tropical forest, for example, where satellite communications do not work. While 4G now allows up to 100 devices to talk with each other simultaneously within a radius of 500 meters, 5G can handle a lot more devices using the same communications protocol, according to Wilson Chow, a telecoms analyst with PwC China. <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/gear/article/2189069/chinas-tech-moguls-bet-5g-help-lift-economy-amid-increased-security">China's tech moguls bet on 5G to help lift economy amid increased security scrutiny in the West</a> 5G's ability to handle massive amounts of data in ultra-fast speed also comes to play in industrial manufacturing and supply chains. While robots have already taken over the assembly lines in car assembly plants, 5G will allow someone sitting at headquarters to monitor the operations of dozens of factories in different cities in real time. That would be made possible by chips installed in fast-moving machinery, such as robotic arms and conveyor belts. In February, Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson and China Unicom unveiled their 5G-powered <keyword id="24019" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="automation">automation</keyword> project at the Port of Qingdao in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. The initiative aims to slash 70 per cent of labour costs in one of the world's busiest container terminals. "In the future, manufacturing plants and retailers can achieve efficiency with improved workflows because every data point will be gathered, processed and analysed in real time," said Chow. For consumers, 5G is expected to broaden the use of smart home devices like voice-activated speakers and other advanced internet-linked appliances. The <keyword id="35145" type="DOMAIN" weightage="20" keywordseo="global-market">global market</keyword> for smart electric household appliances, for example, is projected to reach 1.5 billion units by 2020 when commercial 5G networks are online, according to data from analytics firm Dun &amp; Bradstreet. Such a trend will help grow the number of so-called smart homes to about 300 million worldwide by 2022, according to an estimate by ABI Research. <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/gear/article/3004743/us-catches-china-5g-readiness-race-heats-ultra-fast-mobile-networks">US catches up with China in 5G readiness as race heats up for ultra-fast mobile networks</a> Technology giants like Amazon.com, Google, Apple and China's Xiaomi Corp have already ratcheted up their efforts to churn out more smart devices, including speakers, vacuum cleaners and rice cookers, remotely controlled via smartphone apps or voice assistants. With 5G, uniform network connectivity and even energy savings would be realised as these devices are linked to the internet. "Previously, you needed to think about how much data you could send between devices and the cloud," said Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon, in an interview last month. "With 5G, companies will no longer be constrained. Every device, even your clock on the wall, could become internet connected." In China, which has the world's biggest internet population and largest smartphone market, the benefits of IoT adoption are expected to become widespread as 5G data consumption is encouraged by the government and telecoms operators, according to PwC's Chow. That would help take Hangzhou's City Brain, a project backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to the next level. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post. With 5G networks, Hangzhou's City Brain will be able to process greater amounts of data gathered from a range of IoT units, including lamp posts, manhole covers and electricity meters. The advanced mobile infrastructure would enable sensors to be deployed in underground pipes to find water leakage. "Every asset can be connected through the internet," said IDC's Cui. "The key question is what's the value of getting more data." <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/2168665/made-china-2025-5g-offers-worlds-biggest-mobile-market-chance-seize">'Made in China 2025': How 5G could put China in charge of the wireless backbone and ahead of the pack</a> Still, more smart data-gathering systems mean increased security concerns. Under Chinese laws, internet companies operating in the country are required to store user data at local servers - and allow authorities to inspect those assets when deemed necessary. China has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, which amounts to about one camera for every seven people. The combination of 5G and IoT resources could turn a smart electricity meter into a real-time surveillance tool to tell whether someone is at home or not. "You can imagine after 5G is rolled out, China would like to make the whole country a smart country," said PwC's Chow. Additional reporting by Zen Soo This article originally appeared on the <a href="http://www.scmp.com">South China Morning Post (SCMP)</a>, the leading news media reporting on China and Asia. For more stories, please download our <a href="https://go.onelink.me/3586748601?pid=3rdpartycontentexchange">mobile app</a>, follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/scmpnews">Twitter</a>, and like us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/scmp">Facebook</a>.

How 5G will unlock the industrial internet, driving another dimension of mobile connectivity

The face of the Indian defence sector is changing rapidly with a strong focus on indigenisation. The man leading that change is Manohar Parrikar, India’s defence minister. Parrikar has worked hard over the last one-and-a-half years to bring a complete turnaround in the defence establishment. 
 
In a latest interview, Parrikar spoke about his future plans and the key security issues facing the country. 
 
Q. The new Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) is being referred to as a game changing policy for the sector. How do you see it altering the Indian defence growth story? 
 
A. In the new DPP, we have tried to shift the focus on Make-in-India, small and medium scale industries. We are also stressing on time-bound procedures. 
 
The defence sector has a strange set of procurement procedures, which do not normally exist for other procurements. One obvious reason is that products need to be tested as unless successful testing is conducted, the costly equipment can’t be procured. So testing is a major criteria and this was, so far, not allowed to Indian private companies and was resulting into major delays. So the new DPP opens up testing facilities. Various defence PSUs are also offering facilities to the private sector. The new DPP will address these concerns of the industry in detail. 
 
Q. The <keyword id="6354869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="make-in-India">Make in India</keyword> initiative is gaining steam. The new category of ‘Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured’ (IDDM) equipment reverses the local mix from 70:30 to 30:70. Do you have any timelines for its implementation? 
 
A. It won’t happen overnight. In the new DPP for IDDM, it will be only now that things will be processed. Orders may be placed after one year and actual production will start after a year. So, it is in 2017 that we will start seeing the real impact. Of course, some push that we had given earlier would result in some shifting of the balance during the current year. 
 
Q. We see a sudden rush from big corporates who want to invest big time in the defence sector. Already some 50 MoUs have been signed and over 350 licenses given. Is there any kind of a mechanism that you are going to put in place to monitor that everything that is being talked about actually takes-off? 
 
A. Unlike other sectors, the buyer is only one except for exports, which we have opened up. In fact, the recorded NoCs for export granted by us in spite of the fact that we have reduced the number of items under restricted export in defence, has almost tripled as compared to last year and grown by five times the earlier years. We are now touching around Rs 2000 crore this year. I expect growth of another 50%-100% because of offsets. 
 
In the next year, we should cross Rs 1 billion in exports, which itself will be an achievement. Except the export part of it, the rest is produced and purchased by the Indian defence forces. These are part of preparations. These are not actual fructification. The fructification will happen in the current year for some in the private sector whom we are already placing orders with. In fact, Tata’s have developed 6x6 (truck for Indian army), Larsen &amp; Toubro is in the final stage of getting the order for self-propelled guns. 
 
Q. Will the entry of private companies affect the role of defence PSUs and DRDO? 
A. PSUs are also part of Make-in-India. We are asking them to broaden their vendor base and get products outsourced so that the private industry also develops in course. 
 
Q. Indian defence companies say their products are comparatively much cheaper to, say those supplied by US companies, like for example the ultra-light weight howitzers developed by the Kalyani Group is around 50% cheaper than that manufactured in the US. Aren’t we spending a lot for importing equipments like these? 
 
A. I am not aware of the costs but I will definitely find out. We are serious on indigenously developed products and I will talk to them. 
 
Q. Are you happy with the budget allocation? How would you in the present constraints of fund allocation priorities your plans on modernization? 
A. I don’t see a big fund constraint. Let me put it this way, in a month if a family eats say 20 kg of rice they may consume around 500 grams a day --- so budgets have to be seen in that angle. What do I require today? One is my committed liabilities. I am talking about capital acquisition so if I have placed orders with the vendors then as they supply I have to go and pay. For example, Apache Helicopter for which I placed the order in October. It will be supplied in 2018. Initially, I paid some 15%. The total including the weapon package was about Rs 21,000-22,000 crore. I paid only Rs 3000 crore. How much do I require as per the calibrated payment terms --- maybe I will require another Rs 1500 crore this year and Rs 1500 crore next year and maybe some Rs 5000 crore or Rs 8000 crore the year after. So what I do today has its impact in next 5-10 years and what was done in 2012-13 is going to reflect now. 
 
Q. What about China and Pakistan’s participation in the Defexpo? 
A. I don’t see a big issue in inviting or not inviting. Traditionally, they have not been invited but I think from China we had some people to visit if I am not mistaken. There is no calibrated decision specifically taken in this regard. 
 
Q. The double finance scrutiny first by MoD and then by finance ministry is making defence procurement cumbersome. Why should there be a double scrutiny at all? 
A. Ask that question to the finance ministry. If you ask me it is a triple level --- MoD, then our own finance department and then the MoF. I think it’s a case for a higher delegated power. It will be taken up but I don’t see it as a big problem. I have no problem in finance expenditure going through it. 
 
Q. Your comments on the government’s plans to cut foreign vendor contracts by 30% in the next two years? 
A. We don’t intend to cut. We intend to purchase locally so automatically the procurement from outside will reduce. 
 
Q. In Rafale jet deal pricing is a big issue? Even the law ministry has recently raised some objections? 
A. Price is equally important. While I want the aircraft, I will definitely be interested in the right price. The objections are being attended to. 
 
Q. Your government is completing two years in office? How do you think it has performed? 
A. I am happy because this government is doing more than reasonably well. The foundation is already there and lot of things have been done by this government which had been in limbo for last 10-12 years so I feel that in another one year we would be very clearly reaping the benefits of the seeds that have been sown by this government and things that have been done by this government.

You Searched For "latest rice cooker under 3000" and got 5 results

Best rice cooker under ₹3000

BI India Bureau

Soil health card boosts farm income up to Rs 30K/acre depending on crops: Study

PTI

How small-town Maine embraced a family that fled the Taliban

Elyse Lightman Samuels

How 5G will unlock the industrial internet, driving another dimension of mobile connectivity

SCMP

Parrikar: Real impact of Make in India in defence sector will be seen in 2017

Anupama Airy

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides