Face Authentication now in PM-Kisan Mobile App

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme provides income support to farmers through DBT.

Face Authentication now in PM-Kisan Mobile App

What’s in today’s article?

  • Why in News?
  • Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN)
  • Objective of PM-KISAN
  • Definition of Farmer’s Family
  • Pattern of Funding for PM-KISAN Scheme
  • Who is Eligible for the PM-Kisan Scheme?
  • Who is Not Eligible for PM-KISAN Scheme?
  • Performance/Achievements of the PM-KISAN Scheme
  • News Summary
  • PM-KISAN to be Integrated with Bhashini Portal

 

Why in News?

  • In a first for any central welfare scheme, the Union government has rolled out a face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan app.

 

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN)

  • The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) Yojana came into effect from December 1, 2018.
  • Under the scheme, income support of Rs 6000 per annum is provided to all eligible farmer families across the country in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000 each every four months.
  • The fund of Rs 2,000 is directly transferred to the bank accounts of the eligible farmers/farmer’s family under the Direct Benefit Transfer Mode.
  • Nodal Ministry – Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare

 

Objective of PM-KISAN

  • To supplement the financial needs of all landholding farmers’ families in procuring various inputs to ensure proper crop health and appropriate yields, commensurate with the anticipated farm income as well as for domestic needs.

 

Definition of Farmer’s Family

  • A landholder farmer’s family is defined as “a family comprising of husband, wife and minor children” who owns cultivable land as per land records of the concerned State/UT.
  • The entire identification process of the family rests with the State/UT Governments.

 

Pattern of Funding for PM-KISAN Scheme

  • It is a Central Sector Scheme with 100% funding from the Central Government.

 

Who is Eligible for the PM-Kisan Scheme?

  • Landholding farmers’ families with cultivable landholding in their names,
  • Farmers from both the urban and rural areas,
  • Small and Marginal farmers families.

 

Who is Not Eligible for PM-KISAN Scheme?

  • Institutional landholder,
  • Present or retired officers and employees of state/central government as well as PSUs and government autonomous bodies,
  • Beneficiaries with higher economic status are not eligible,
  • Those who pay income tax,
  • Farmer families holding constitutional posts,
  • Professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers,
  • Retired pensioners with a monthly pension of over Rs 10,000.

 

Performance/Achievements of the PM-KISAN Scheme

  • The scheme provides income support to landholding farmers in India, which helps them procure various inputs related to agriculture and allied activities and their domestic needs.
  • The government is trying to reach and pass on the benefits to all eligible farmer families through this scheme. This is one of the finest examples of good governance.
  • More than 11 crore farmers have availed the scheme and an amount of Rs 2.42 lakh crore has been transferred to their accounts.
    • This makes it the largest DBT scheme in the country.
  • The process of registration of beneficiaries has been made simple and easy through a mobile app — PM KISAN portal.
  • The scheme also provides for grievance redressal and a helpdesk.
    • Through this initiative, more than 13.5 lakh grievances have been addressed by the concerned state authorities.
  • The scheme has a significant impact on easing liquidity constraints as a large share of farmers have constraints on obtaining formal credit.
  • While the scheme is pitched as a general cash transfer scheme for farmers, its role in the adoption of modern technologies remains an important contributing factor in the modernisation of agriculture by enhancing productive investment by farmers.

 

News Summary

  • In a first for any central welfare scheme, the Union government has rolled out a face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan app.
  • This will enable beneficiary farmers to complete their e-KYC process by just scanning their face on mobile phones instead of using one-time password or fingerprints.
  • Until now, e-KYC of the PM-Kisan beneficiaries used to be done through either biometrics at a designated centre or one-time passwords sent to mobile phone numbers linked with Aadhaar.
    • However, during the e-KYC exercise, officials found many instances when farmers’ mobile numbers were not linked to Aadhaar due to which the process could not be complete.
    • In the case of biometrics, several elderly farmers faced problems going to the nearby centre. Also, many faced the issue of non-matching of fingerprints.
  • Therefore, to ease the e-KYC process, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare decided to introduce the face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan mobile app.
  • The face authentication feature uses iris data of a person having an Aadhaar number.

 

PM-KISAN to be Integrated with Bhashini Portal

  • BHASHINI is India’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) led language translation platform.
  • Bhashini aims to build a National Public Digital Platform for languages to develop services and products for citizens by leveraging the power of AI.
  • The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said that the PM-KISAN scheme is also integrating with Bhashini to provide farmers information in their native language.

 


Q1) What is Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme?

With DBT program, GoI aims to make payments directly into the Aadhaar linked bank accounts of the end beneficiaries, removing any malpractices from the existing system such as diversions and duplicate payments.

 

Q2) What is the definition of small, marginal and large farmers?

Marginal: Below 1.00 hectare. Small: 1.00-2.00 hectare. Semi- Medium: 2.00-4.00 hectare. Medium: 4.00-10.00 hectare. Large: 10.00 hectare and above.

 


Source: Face authentification now in PM-Kisan mobile app, a first for Govt schemes | Indian Express  

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