Context: Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has launched ‘Kisan Rath’ mobile application (app) to facilitate transportation of foodgrains and perishable during lockdown.
About the application

• It has been developed to facilitate transportation of foodgrains and perishables during lockdown.
• It is developed by the National Informatics Centre to facilitate farmers and traders in searching transport vehicles for movement of Agriculture and Horticulture produce.
• Transportation will become easier with this app as it will help farmers and traders for transporting produce from farm gate to mandi and mandi to mandi all over the country.
• The Mobile Application named will also facilitates Farmers and Traders in identifying right mode of transportation for movement of farm produce ranging from foodgrain, Fruits and Vegetables, oil seeds, spices, fiber crops, flowers, bamboo and coconuts.
• The App will also facilitates traders in transportation of perishable commodities by Refrigerated vehicles.
• This Mobile App will be made available in eight languages in Android version initially, and is ready for pan-India use.

Other measures

• Railways introduced 65 routes for running 567 Parcel Specials (out of which 503 are time table parcel trains) to supply essential commodities at fast speed. These trains have transported 20,653 tonnes of consignments across the country.
• Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme during the lockdown period from 24.3.2020 till date, about 8.78 crore farmer families have been benefitted and an amount of Rs. 17,551 crore has been released so far.
• Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PM-GKY) about 88,234.56 MT of pulses has been issued to the States/UTs.
• In order to facilitate the Seed sector during lockdown period, the Government has agreed to extend the validity of license of Seed dealers which are expired or going to be expired till 30.09.2020.
• Under Plant Quarantine system, it has been decided to extend the validity of all pack-houses, processing units and treatment facilities whose validity is expiring up to 30th June 2020 for a period of one year without physical inspection of such facility through a simplified procedure to facilitate export of agriculture products.