PM praises AP youth's work as weatherman

[Anta Assamey]

A Tirupati youth was praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday for his efforts to help farmers by providing weather-related information in the local language.

During his 'Mann Ki Baat' monthly radio programme, the Prime Minister mentioned B. Sai Praneeth, who calls himself the 'Andhra Pradesh Weatherman'.

A software engineer, Sai Praneeth observed that due to inclement weather, farmers of his area had to suffer huge losses.

He a had keen interest in meteorology for the past many years and hence he decided to use his passion and his talent for the welfare of farmers, Modi said.

"Now he purchases weather data from various sources, analyse them, translate them in local language and disseminates the necessary information to farmers.

"Apart from providing weather updates, Sai Praneeth also gives guidance on the dos and don'ts for different climate conditions, especially for protection from floods, storms and lightening," the Prime Minister added.

The 24-year-old from Tirupati, who has done B. Tech in electrical engineering from Anna University, had keen interest in weather since his childhood. He started gathering data and analysing them.

The youth observed that people, especially farmers, were suffering losses due to unseasonal rains, sudden changes in weather and natural calamities. He felt that they could have saved themselves from the losses if they had access to some advance information about the weather.

Last year, he started blogging to provide information to farmers in Telugu language.

He also opened accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and began to post weather information and analysis. The content on social media platforms is mostly in English as majority of the target audience will be people who understand English in urban areas.

The UN Habitat Journal's site last month featured Sai Praneeth's work.

"Social media outlets have proven to be powerful mediums for reaching out to varied groups. This was illustrated by Sai Praneeth, the 'Andhra Pradesh Weatherman' whose weather blog and website found a significant following among rural farmers who use the information to make informed decisions daily. He asserted the need for collating and converting complex information into simple and direct messages geared for micro, regional level in Telugu and English."