For millions of farmers across India, timely access to financial support through the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme is essential to meet their needs. The scheme disburses ₹6,000 annually to over 90 million farmers, providing vital economic relief. However, managing large volumes of farmer queries related to payment status, registration, and e-KYC—amongst others—manually tends to be cumbersome for block and district-level officials, resulting in delays and significant backlogs.

The Solution: AI Chatbot Tailored for Farmers’ Grievance Redressal

In September 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India, launched Kisan-eMitra—a grievance redressal AI chatbot—to ease this burden on block and district-level officials and reduce delays for farmers.

In February 2024, Wadhwani AI—with support from Google.organd in collaboration with Bhashini, EkStep, NIC, and Samagra—developed and integrated advanced AI and ML capabilities into the Kisan-eMitra chatbot. The chatbot now uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to swiftly decipher the intent of the queries, retrieves relevant information, and employs a Large Language Model (LLM) to provide accurate answers—easing the workload on scheme officials.

The chatbot handles 49 query categories in 11 languages (Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Odia, Malayalam, Gujarati, Panjabi, Kannada, and English) with Bhashini’s IndicTrans2 model. It uses predefined response templates, tailored with beneficiary-specific data, to generate replies.

To enhance the user experience, user interactions are analyzed periodically to identify the most common queries. This analysis helps display the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) based on trending inquiries from farmers. This enables users to simply click on a FAQ to receive an immediate response, eliminating the need to type or speak. Additionally, farmers with varying literacy levels and diverse backgrounds can submit their queries via text input, clicks (FAQs), or voice input in their preferred language and receive prompt, accurate responses, thereby accelerating the grievance redressal process.

Transforming the Grievance Redressal Landscape

Since the introduction of new AI features, Kisan-eMitra, accessible on the PM-KISAN website and mobile app, has answered 2.69 million queries in just 186 days—a 668% increase*—compared to traditional manual grievance redressal. The chatbot responds to an average of approximately 13,000 queries dailyfrom farmers across the country.

The impact Kisan-eMitra has had on the workings of the PM Kisan scheme has bolstered the efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoAFW), who will be integrating the chatbot with three additional central-level schemes—namely, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Kisan Credit Card, and Soil Health Card (SHC). This move aims to extend advanced technology support to the beneficiaries associated with the schemes, reflecting the growing confidence in AI-driven solutions to address large-scale challenges in the agricultural sector.

References

*Reported for the period 6 March – 5 August 2024; single interaction or series of interactions between a user and a chatbot during a specific timeframe.

Authored by: Nishtha Gorke