Weather forecast in villages

Children of Paradsingha and their weather board
Children of Paradsingha and their weather board

Recently Shweta Bhattad through her Gram Art Project drew my attention to a very simple but immensely useful initiative started by the children of Paradsinga village. Paradsinga is situated on the Madhya Pradesh border. The population consists mainly of small farmers.

The children were introduced to the internet very recently. Seeing the wealth of information available on the internet they struck upon a novel idea. They would read up weather updates from various sites on the internet and then display them on a small blackboard near the village market. Initially the updates were dismissed and ignored if not outright pooh poohed. However, with recent unseasonal rains and hailstorms people noticed that those that paid heed were able to save their grains and shelter their animals in timely manner. Within a week almost everyone started coming to the weather blackboard to read the forecast.

The Weather board
The Weather board

This simple initiative is now saving time, labor, cattle and crops. With availability of mobile phones this can be replicated in every village in India at almost zero cost. One just needs to make a few children aware of it.