{"id":35801,"date":"2023-06-09T02:24:36","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T20:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=35801"},"modified":"2025-04-21T12:19:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T06:49:23","slug":"govt-to-utilise-pacs-as-drone-entrepreneurs-for-spraying-fertilisers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/govt-to-utilise-pacs-as-drone-entrepreneurs-for-spraying-fertilisers\/","title":{"rendered":"Govt to Utilise PACS as \u2018Drone Entrepreneurs\u2019 for Spraying Fertilisers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What Is a Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS)?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Why Are PACS Attractive?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>News Summary<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>About Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras (PMKSK)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Ministry of Cooperation issued a statement that Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) can also be employed as drone entrepreneurs for spraying fertilisers and pesticides.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What Is a Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS)?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>PACS are village level <strong>cooperative credit societies<\/strong> that serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure headed by the <strong>State Cooperative Banks (SCB)<\/strong> at the state level.\n<ul>\n<li>Credit from the SCBs is transferred to the <strong>District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs)<\/strong>, that operate at the district level.<\/li>\n<li>The DCCBs work with PACS, which deal directly with farmers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Since these are cooperative bodies, individual farmers are members of the PACS, and office-bearers are elected from within them. A village can have multiple PACS.<\/li>\n<li>PACSs <strong>provide short-term, and medium-term agricultural loans to the farmers for the various agricultural and farming activities<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The first PACS was formed in <strong>1904<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00b7 \u00a0 Currently, there are more than 1,00,000 PACS in the country with a huge member base of more than 13 crore farmers. However, <strong>only 63,000 of them are functional<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why Are PACS Attractive?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The attraction of the PACS lies in the <strong>last mile connectivity they offer<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>For farmers, timely access to capital is necessary at the start of their agricultural activities.<\/li>\n<li>PACS have the capacity to <strong>extend credit with minimal paperwork within a short time<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>With other scheduled commercial banks, farmers have often complained of tedious paperwork and red tape.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>For farmers, PACS provide strength in numbers, as most of the paperwork is taken care of by the office-bearer of the PACS.<\/li>\n<li>In the case of scheduled commercial banks, farmers have to individually meet the requirement and often have to take the help of agents to get their loans sanctioned.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Major Drawback of PACS \u2013<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Since PACS are cooperative bodies, however, <strong>political compulsions often trump financial discipline<\/strong>, and the recovery of loans is hit.<\/li>\n<li>Chairpersons of PACS participate in electing the office-bearers of DCCBs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Political affiliations are important here as well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>News Summary<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Ministry of Cooperation issued a statement that <strong><u>Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) can also be employed as drone entrepreneurs for spraying fertilisers and pesticides<\/u><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The statement also said that the PACS which are not currently functioning as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samridhi Kendras will be brought under their ambit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>About Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras (PMKSK)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Central government launched <strong>600<\/strong> Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras in 2022.<\/li>\n<li>These Kendras are <strong>one-stop solutions to farmers<\/strong> in the form of crop advisories, soil- and seed-testing facilities, retailing seeds and pesticides, and even custom hiring of agricultural equipment and machines.<\/li>\n<li>PMKSK functions under the <strong>Ministry of Chemicals &amp; Fertilizers<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is the role of NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development)?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>NABARD is a Development Bank with a mandate for providing and regulating credit for the development of agriculture, small-scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts and other allied economic activities in rural areas to promote prosperity of rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2) What is meant by Kisan Credit Card?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The Kisan Credit Card scheme is a Government of India scheme which provides farmers with timely access to credit. The Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme was launched in 1998 with the aim of providing short-term formal credit to farmers and was created by NABARD.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/india\/govt-to-utilise-pacs-as-drone-entrepreneurs-for-spraying-fertilisers-8653461\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Govt to utilise PACS as \u2018drone entrepreneurs\u2019 for spraying fertilisers<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Primary Agricultural Credit Society is a village level cooperative credit society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}