VARANASI, March 7 -- Standing at the boundary of a wheat farm in Mehandi Ganj area of Rajatalab, around 15 km from Varanasi, Neetu Singh, a mother of three and a housewife, is spraying nano urea on the crop with a little flying machine: a drone equipped to carry the solution.

It's a sight that is common now, but it wasn't once so. There was suspicion, speculation and much hesitation among farmers to the deployment of this technology over their standing crops. It took a lot of convincing but they gave it a try in the end.

This started an agricultural revolution of sorts, saving time and money, while getting the woman drone operator cash to supplement the family income.

Neetu controls the drone with efficiency and covers an acre of crop ...