Sea level rise not causing major erosion: Govt

NEW DELHI: The rise in sea level by 1.29 millimetre every year along the Indian coastline has not caused any major erosion, science and technology and earth sciences minister Vilasrao Deshmukh informed the Rajya Sabha today.

He said during Question Hour that the ministry of environment was conducting a study on the impact of the rising sea levels.

Referring to question related with Gujarat coast, Deshmukh said that as part of long-term monintoring of sea level, the Survey of India has established four tide gauges (Okha, Veraval, Porbander and Kandla) for continuous measurements of sea level along the state's coast.

He said all these gauge stations were transmitting data in real time to the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad.

Replying to another question on SMS and Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) services for farmers, Deshmukh said the Agro-meteorological Advisory Service (AAS) of IMD has been successful in providing the crop specific advisories to the farmers at district level.

He said a third party evaluation carried out by the National Centre for Applied Economic Research ( NCAER) has brought out the usefulness of the mobile and IVRS usage in dissemination of advisories on different farming operations.

At present, the AAS products are disseminated through SMS and IVRS to 2.74 million farmers in the country through Public-Private partnership mode.

The minister said that as per NCAER report, 24 per cent farmers are using AAS services.