The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 14 August 2026 to integrate IMD’s agro-meteorological data into the Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture (DiCRA) platform. The partnership will make district and block level forecasts, advisories and weather alerts freely available through DiCRA’s open digital infrastructure. It aims to give farmers, rural lenders, researchers and policymakers timely weather intelligence to make climate resilient decisions in agriculture.
What Does the NABARD IMD MoU on DiCRA Cover?
The MoU was signed in New Delhi by Sanjeev D. Rohilla, Chief General Manager of NABARD’s Department of Climate Action and Sustainability, and Bikram Singh, Scientist-G and Head of IMD’s Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) Mumbai. The ceremony was witnessed by Dr Shaji K V, Chairman of NABARD, and Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology at IMD, along with senior officials from both organisations and representatives of partner institutions including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which supports the DiCRA platform.
Under the agreement, IMD will provide a comprehensive suite of agro-meteorological products through a dedicated Weather Portal within DiCRA. These will be combined with DiCRA’s existing geospatial layers to generate location specific, decision ready insights at the district and block level. NABARD will use DiCRA’s open APIs, web portal, mobile interface and data infrastructure to disseminate the products in farmer friendly and actionable formats. The data will be made freely accessible to farmers, financial institutions, researchers, field staff and policymakers across India. Reports indicate the integration will also strengthen NABARD’s existing weather portal within DiCRA, which is currently under development.
What Is NABARD and Why Was It Established?
NABARD stands for National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. It is an All India Development Financial Institution and the apex supervisory body for Regional Rural Banks, State Cooperative Banks and District Central Cooperative Banks.
NABARD was established on 12 July 1982 under the NABARD Act, 1981 (Act 61 of 1981). It was set up on the recommendation of the Committee to Review Arrangements for Institutional Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development (CRAFICARD), constituted by the Reserve Bank of India on 30 March 1979 under the chairmanship of B. Sivaraman, former member of the Planning Commission. The Committee’s interim report in November 1979 called for a dedicated institution to give focused attention to rural credit and development. Parliament approved the creation of NABARD, which took over the agricultural credit functions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the refinance functions of the Agricultural Refinance and Development Corporation (ARDC). It was dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 5 November 1982 with an initial capital of ₹100 crore.
NABARD is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It operates under the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry of Finance and is now fully owned by the Government of India. It has 31 regional offices, a cell at Srinagar, training establishments and more than 400 District Development Managers working at the district level. Its mandate is to provide and regulate credit and other facilities for agriculture, small and cottage industries, handicrafts and other allied economic activities to promote integrated rural development.
A common question is whether NABARD is a commercial bank. It is not. NABARD does not take deposits from the public like a commercial bank. It is a development bank that provides refinance to cooperative banks, regional rural banks and other rural financial institutions, plans rural credit, supervises those institutions and supports rural development projects. It also acts as a channel for government schemes related to agriculture, rural infrastructure and climate finance, including funds linked to the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Change Adaptation Fund.
What Is the India Meteorological Department?
IMD stands for India Meteorological Department. It is the principal government agency for meteorological observations, weather forecasting and seismology in India. IMD functions under the Ministry of Earth Sciences and is headquartered at Mausam Bhawan, Lodhi Road, New Delhi.
IMD was established on 15 January 1875, after a tropical cyclone hit Calcutta in 1864 and monsoon failures in 1866 and 1871 exposed the need for a central weather authority. H. F. Blanford was appointed the first Meteorological Reporter to the Government of India, and Sir John Eliot became the first Director General of Observatories in May 1889 at Calcutta. The headquarters later shifted to Shimla in 1905, then to Pune in 1928 and finally to New Delhi in 1944. The current Director General of Meteorology is Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra.
IMD operates through six Regional Meteorological Centres at Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur and Guwahati, supported by state level Meteorological Centres, forecasting offices, Agromet Advisory Centres, Flood Meteorological Offices and cyclone detection radar stations. Its core work includes weather observation, numerical weather prediction, satellite meteorology and dissemination of forecasts and warnings.
For agriculture, IMD runs the Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) scheme, which provides Agro-Meteorological Advisory Services (AAS). Under GKMS, IMD issues quantitative district and block level forecasts for up to five days covering rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind and cloudiness. These forecasts are used by a network of 130 Agro-Met Field Units (AMFUs) located in agro climatic zones and District Agromet Units (DAMUs) established at Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Advisories are prepared twice a week on Tuesday and Friday and disseminated through SMS to more than 4.3 crore farmers via the mKisan portal, along with websites, print media, radio, Doordarshan’s DD Kisan channel and WhatsApp groups. The Agricultural Meteorology Division at Pune, set up in 1932, is the nodal division for this work.
Understanding DiCRA and Climate Resilient Agriculture
What Is Climate Resilient Agriculture?
Climate resilient agriculture means farming systems that can withstand, adapt to and recover from climate risks such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, erratic rainfall and cyclones, while still maintaining productivity and incomes. It involves using resilient crop varieties, efficient water management, adjusted sowing dates, soil health practices and timely weather advisories to reduce losses. In India, where agriculture employs a large share of the workforce and a large proportion of area is rainfed, even a small shift in monsoon can cut incomes of smallholders by up to 25 percent in affected regions. Building resilience is therefore central to food security and rural livelihoods.
The Government supports this agenda through programmes such as the National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), a network project of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) launched in February 2011. NICRA focuses on strategic research, technology demonstration in vulnerable districts through Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), and capacity building, and its experience informs platforms like DiCRA.
How Does the DiCRA Platform Work?
DiCRA stands for Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture. It is a collaborative digital public good that provides open access to key geospatial datasets relevant to climate resilient agriculture. The platform was developed through a partnership involving the Government of Telangana, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Lab India, ICRISAT, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) and other partners, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. It was recognised as a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance in 2022.
DiCRA curates high resolution datasets on more than 20 agricultural parameters, including soil moisture, vegetation health, crop conditions, drought intensity, land use and climate vulnerability. It uses remote sensing, machine learning and pattern detection to identify which farms and villages are resilient and which are highly vulnerable, and to analyse changes over space and time. The insights are validated through contributions from hundreds of data scientists and citizen scientists worldwide and are guided by principles of open access, open software, open code and open APIs.
The platform was initially launched in Telangana and has since expanded. By 2023, it was reported to provide intelligence for about 50 million hectares of farmland across several states including Telangana, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Kerala and Maharashtra. With its geospatial coverage and analytics, it helps optimise public investments related to watershed management, micro irrigation, warehousing and contingency planning.
NABARD and UNDP signed a separate five year MoU on 13 September 2023 to boost data driven innovations in agriculture. Under that partnership, NABARD agreed to host and maintain the DiCRA platform with technical support from UNDP, using its geospatial datasets for policy making, research and product development. The current MoU with IMD builds on that foundation by adding real time weather intelligence to the existing climate and agriculture layers.
What Agro-Meteorological Data Will Be Integrated?
The MoU creates a dedicated Weather Portal within DiCRA’s suite of thematic portals. Rather than operating as a separate service, IMD’s products will be integrated alongside DiCRA’s geospatial data so that users can see weather and agricultural risk factors together at district and block level.
| IMD Product Integrated into DiCRA | What It Provides |
|---|---|
| District and block level weather forecasts | Quantitative forecasts for the next five days for rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity and cloudiness |
| Agrometeorological advisories | Crop and location specific guidance prepared with AMFUs and DAMUs, issued twice a week, covering sowing, irrigation, fertiliser and pesticide application, harvest and protection measures |
| In-situ weather observations | Real time data from IMD’s observation network, including automatic weather stations |
| Weather alerts and warnings | Immediate alerts for extreme events such as heavy rain, heatwave, cold wave, thunderstorm or cyclone risk |
| Seasonal risk and vulnerability assessments | Weather linked vulnerability analysis that combines climate exposure with agricultural conditions to identify high risk blocks |
NABARD will channel these products through DiCRA’s web portal, mobile interface and open APIs. The information will be translated into actionable, farmer friendly formats and made available in local languages where possible, reaching farmers, credit officers, field staff, researchers and policymakers. Integration through APIs also allows state departments, banks and research institutions to pull the data directly into their own advisory or credit risk systems.
Why Does This Partnership Matter for Farmers and Rural Finance?
For farmers, the benefit is timely, hyperlocal information. A block level forecast and a crop specific advisory can help decide when to sow, when to irrigate, when to spray and when to harvest, reducing crop loss from untimely rain or heat stress. Alerts for heavy rain or storms give time to protect harvested produce, livestock and inputs. Over a season, such decisions improve yield stability and lower input waste, which is especially important for small and marginal farmers.
For the rural financial system, weather intelligence improves risk assessment. About 60 percent of India’s cultivated area remains rainfed, and monsoon variability directly affects repayment capacity. Credit officers in cooperative banks and regional rural banks can use vulnerability assessments combined with soil moisture and vegetation data to better price and monitor agricultural loans, identify risk hotspots and plan for climate adaptation finance. NABARD, as the apex refinance and supervisory institution, can use district level climate dashboards to design better schemes for watershed development, micro irrigation and climate proofing projects, including those funded through the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change and the Green Climate Fund, where NABARD is an accredited entity.
For policymakers and researchers, open access to combined weather and geospatial datasets supports evidence based planning. District and state administrations can prioritise vulnerable villages, target investments, and learn from resilient ones. The open data approach also allows collaboration among data scientists, universities and startups to build new tools for precision agriculture and insurance.
More broadly, the partnership advances the idea of Digital Public Infrastructure for agriculture. By making a trusted public weather service available on an open platform maintained by a development bank and UNDP, it democratises climate information that earlier remained scattered across departmental portals.
The Way Forward
The immediate task is technical integration. IMD’s forecasts, advisories, observations and alerts will be mapped to DiCRA’s data standards and made available through the new Weather Portal with consistent district and block level granularity. NABARD’s role will be to ensure the products are delivered in actionable formats and are regularly updated, with translation support for local use.
The next step is expanding access and use. This includes strengthening API linkages so that banks, KVKs, state agriculture departments and agri startups can embed the weather intelligence into credit scoring, extension services and farm advisories, and training field staff and farmers to interpret vulnerability assessments. Greater coverage through DAMUs at KVKs will help extend block level advisory services, which currently reach about 2,200 blocks on an experimental basis, toward a pan India scale.
Over time, the combined datasets can support new applications such as weather indexed insurance design, real time crop stress monitoring and better targeting of climate adaptation funds. Success will depend on data quality, regular model updates, feedback from users and sustained collaboration between meteorology, agriculture and finance institutions.
Key Takeaways
- NABARD and IMD signed an MoU on 14 August 2026 in New Delhi to integrate IMD’s agro-meteorological data into the DiCRA platform.
- DiCRA stands for Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture, a Digital Public Good recognised in 2022 that provides open access to geospatial datasets for climate resilient agriculture.
- NABARD was established on 12 July 1982 under the NABARD Act, 1981 on the recommendation of the CRAFICARD Committee chaired by B. Sivaraman, and is headquartered in Mumbai.
- IMD was established on 15 January 1875 and functions under the Ministry of Earth Sciences from Mausam Bhawan, New Delhi, with Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra as Director General of Meteorology.
- The MoU will deliver district and block level forecasts, agrometeorological advisories, in-situ observations and weather alerts through a dedicated Weather Portal within DiCRA via web, mobile and open APIs.
