Team Drona wins cash award of Rs. 1 lakh for their model of
using drones to map drought-hit areas
Team
Drona from IIT Bombay won a cash award of Rs. 1 lakh for their model for
achieving a drought-free State at the Transform Maharashtra event at the
National Sports Club of India in Worli.
The
initiative is aimed at promoting the concept of inclusive governance in the
State. The team, which comprises Water Resource Engineering and Ocean
Engineering students, has proposed the use of drones to map fields and take
measurements.
Money
saver
At present,
a government official needs to visit the drought-hit areas and map them. While
taking manual measurements costs around Rs. 20,000 per square kilometre, the
use of drones will bring down the cost to around Rs. 5,000 for mapping around
40 square kilometres. The drones are also capable of processing the data within
24 hours. Speaking to The Hindu, team member Parvathi Shrikumar said,
“Maharashtra is dealing with the worst drought of the century, so we decided to
provide a solution to this problem. All our research is related to watershed
management.”
Team
Drona’s project consists of three parts: creating a Special Decision Support
System for water conservation; forming an entity to buy poorly graded farming
loans and sell them in the market at a competitive rate by bundling them with
valued assets such as government bonds; and providing a competent database.
According
to the team members, the current database is under government control and can
be easily tampered with by officials. They also highlighted the presence of a
number of bureaucratic hurdles in order to access data. “I don’t know what the
government is doing by withholding the data. What harm can come out of knowing
how much rain fell in 2015?” said Shivam Mundir, a team member. Mr. Pundir said,
“A transparent system can help in monitoring drought and provide students and
NGOs with data, which can bring about better solutions.”
The
team says government backing for the resale of poorly graded farming loans will
help the market to be liquidated in the long run. The hope is the move will
empower smaller banks to offer loans with significantly reduced risk. Mr.
Pundir said, “The short-term solution today seems to be to waiving the existing
farm loans.”
The
team is confident that government agencies will adopt their model. “When the
Chief Minister posed questions to us, we realised he had already gone through
our work and looked at our proposal as a solution to the drought crisis,” said
Mr. Pundir.
Technology
to the rescue
Chief
Minister Davendra Fadnavis said, “Development in technology is speeding up the
pace of development. In the initial stage of technology, the things that used
to take 15 years to achieve can now be achieved in just two years.” He said,
“Today, 11,000 villages are no longer dependent on tankers for drinking water
supply. Similarly, 29,000 villages across the State are connected with fibre
optics to transform the conventional gram panchayats into smart gram
panchayats.”
Bollywood
actor Akshay Kumar who was present at the event said that government should set
up mobile toilets at every 500 metres or 1 kilometre across Maharashtra. Mr.
Kumar said, “It will support cleanliness. An app should enable people to locate
the nearest mobile toilet.” Women in rural areas face a lot of difficulties as
there are hardly any public toilets in villages, he said.
Source: THE HINDU-2nd May,2017
