3. Lack of awareness and Infrastructure The benefits and facilities designed and offered are of no use, if the ones they are made for, are not aware of it. Similarly, basic infrastructure, like Weather stations with the latest accurate measuring technology, needs to go below the district level, to enable the benefit of the policy to reach the insured farmer. 4.4.3. Automatic Weather Stations Existing weather stations in the country, provide inadequate information for the implementation of weather insurance. Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has developed a low cost Automatic Weather Station and transferred the technology to a commercial firm. The signals from the equipment will be transmitted to satellite and further received at the Space Application Centre, (SAC) Ahmedabad . From SAC, the data could be provided, by various states and agencies. Establishment of state level data centres, could also receive data and enable further utilization of the database State government support is essential, for the installation of the equipment on a massive scale. Possible support from state governments, could include the following. Identification of the site for the installation as per the specifications of IMD 2. Operation and maintenance of equipment. Partial financial support of the cost of the equipment, and. Establishment of data centres for receiving ISRO data for various purposes The approval of IMD is essential, IMD could provide technical support in verification of these sites, before the installation of the equipment. The data could also be utilized by IMD, to strengthen the database of IMD for other uses. Since data transmission is through satellite, separate manpower is not needed for data collection. Moreover, the possibility of tampering of the data at a local level, is also not possible in this equipment. Some state governments, like Kerala, have already installed such equipment, with the technical collaboration of IMD. The expansion of the weather network in the country, on a massive scale during the XI Five Year Plan, could be considered, as a collaborative project of state governments, ISRO and IMD.
Picture of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) installed at Harni (Ratnagiri dt of Maharashtra) National Collateral Management Services Limited (NCMSL) is provided in Figure-3 below: