In order to aid farmers in transporting their products and boost value realization through air transportation, Krishi UDAN was introduced in August 2020 on both international and domestic routes. This scheme was launched along the lines of the Udan Scheme. Udan was an air regional connectivity program and it gives a unique chance to the common person to fly at a reasonable price. After the success of Udan, Krishi Udan Yojana was launched to help farmers and promote the transportation of agricultural produce by air.
Krishi Udan Yojana:
The Krishi Udan Yojana was launched by the Minister of Civil Aviation to help farmers transport their produce and increase their “value realization.” It was introduced on both domestic and foreign routes. This will significantly aid in raising the value of agricultural products, particularly in the northeast and tribal areas. Under the program, selected airlines are given financial incentives in the form of concessions from the union government, state governments, and airport operators in order to promote operations from underserved and unserved airports and maintain reasonable airfares.
After the Krishi UDAN success, Krishi Udan 2.0 was launched in October 2021 to further boost the vision of the program. Under Krishi UDAN 2.0, perishable food items from tribal communities, northeastern states, and hilly regions would be transported. The Airports Authority of India’s wholly owned subsidiary, AAI Cargo Logistics and Allied Services Company Limited(AAICLAS), and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s national agency for investment promotion and facilitation, Invest India, contributed to its foundation. It outlines the goal of enhancing value realization through improved agri-harvesting and air transportation integration and optimization.
Objectives of the Krishi Udan Yojana:
- To improve the convergence of various elements supporting the creation of resilient and sustainable agri-produce value chains across multiple Central and State Government initiatives.
- To enhance the proportion of air in the combination of modes used to carry agricultural goods, including those from horticulture, fisheries, livestock, and processed goods.
- Increasing domestic and international air connections between origin and destination airports will increase logistics productivity.
- Agri-produce, horticulture, fishery, and livestock products at airports and off-airport facilities, as well as infrastructure and performance in processing air cargo by all stakeholders, including regulatory participating governmental agencies (PGAs).
- Giving particular attention to air freight of natural and organic produce from NER, tribal, and hilly districts
- Enabling digitalization and digitization by integration with already-existing e-platforms and their creation if necessary, allowing paperless and contactless interface with all stakeholders.
- Encouraging the implementation of other regulatory requirements (at the airport) and plant- and animal quarantine measures throughout the whole export supply chain.
Features of the Krishi Udan Yojana:
- Strengthening the hub-and-spoke concept and the freight grid to support the growth of cargo-related infrastructure at airports and outside of airports.
- Convergence of technologies for the creation of the E-KUSHAL (Krishi UDAN for Sustainable Holistic Agri-Logistics) platform to make it easier for all stakeholders to share information. Additionally, it is suggested to integrate E-KUSHAL with the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM). E-KUSHAL is a platform that will be created to facilitate the distribution of information to all stakeholders.
- The plan asks for assistance and encourages states to lower their sales taxes on ATF for freighters and P2C aircraft, as extended in UDAN flights, to 1 percent.
- The Krishi UDAN 2.0 scheme exempts Indian freighters and P2C from paying any landing, parking, TNLC, or RNFC fees at specific airports. Such facilitation and incentives boost transportation.
- Resources are pooled by creating a convergence mechanism, which involves working with other governmental agencies and regulatory authorities to offer incentives and concessions to various stakeholders to improve the air transportation of agricultural products.
Benefits of the Krishi Udan Yojana:
- This plan will assist the agriculture sector in becoming lucrative by removing obstacles from the supply chain, logistics, and transportation of farm products.
- By removing obstacles in the supply chain, logistics, and transportation of farm products, the plan will create new opportunities for the agriculture industry to flourish and assist in doubling farmers’ incomes.
- The Agriculture to Aviation (A2A) approach is being used to ensure that farmers receive the most possible benefits. The use of drones in agriculture and the potential use of biofuel for aviation in the future both point to a convergence between the two industries.
- The issue of wasted agricultural food products will be solved as a result.
Implementation of the Krishi Udan Yojana:
Phase I:
- The plan’s primary focus was on 25 airports in the NER, Hilly, and Tribal regions.
- Some of the cities are Agartala, Dehradun, Dibrugarh, Imphal, Jammu, Leh, Pakyong, Port Blair, Raipur, Ranchi, Shimla, and Silchar.
- Afterward, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) added an additional 28 airports, including Agra, Amritsar, Bareilly, Bhuj, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Goa, Jaisalmer, Jamnagar, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Nasik, etc.
Phase 2:
- The Krishi UDAN 2.0 will be introduced at 53 airports around the nation, primarily concentrating on the Northeast and tribal regions.
- The Ministry of Civil Aviation intends to trial the program for six months before introducing changes depending on the findings of the review and consultations with other stakeholders.
- A few examples include Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Jharsuguda, Kozhikode, Mysuru, Puducherry, Rajkot, Vijayawada, Hollongi, and Salem.