Introduction of ICT component into the agricultural extension

Kiran Yadav

(GBPUAT, Pantnagar)

      About 103 million farm families, cultivated 165 million holdings, spread over in more than 600,000 villages in 598 rural districts of the country and 1:2000 extension agent-farmer ratio; these are the characteristics of India, in the era of knowledge and information (Gautam et al, 2006). Despite of the low literacy rate (54.1%) and poverty the ICT is gaining ground and is revolutionizing the whole world.

      Over the years, man power and shortage of funds have adversely affected the performance of public sector and agricultural extension services. The requirement of field level extension worker is estimated to be about 13-15 lakhs, against which the present availability is only one lakh workers. Presently no state government provides required number of field level workers, as it is cost prohibitive. Extension is now becoming more diversified, technology intensive, knowledge oriented and more demand driven. This requires the extension workers at the cutting edge level to be master of so many trades, which is neither predictable nor possible. In these situations use of ICT in extension, enables the extension workers to be more effective in meeting the information needs of the farmers and to speed up the extension process.

      In the present Indian agriculture situation, the public extension possibly can not provide additional qualified man power to adequately address the complex demands of the farmers by reaching  to the millions of farmers. The development and dissemination of the ICT in rural sector in recent years provide viable alternatives to overcome the physical barriers of face-to-face inter personal communication.

      The Information Society Index (ISI) of 2002, ranked 55 countries in the world in terms of status of ICT in various sectors of economy and society including e-governance. The ISI divided the countries into four categories: skaters (countries which are in a strong position to take full advantage of the information revolution, as they appear to have advanced ICT and social infrastructures); as they appear to be moving purposefully into the information age, with much of the necessary infrastructure in place); sprinters (countries that are moving forward in spurts before needing to catch their breath and shift priorities due to economic, social and political pressures) and strollers (moving ahead but inconsistently, due to limited financial resources in relation to their vast population). India is considered to be one of the strollers and is ranked 53 among 55 countries.  

Successful Innovations of ICT use in rural India

            National Informatics Center (NIC), under Ministry of Communication and IT is acting as nodal service to look after information development and networking in government; corporate and cooperative sectors for decision support. The major initiatives are:

A Knowledge Revolution: MSSRF

      The onset of the industrial revolution in Europe marked the beginning of technological divide both among and with in nations. With explosive progress in many areas of technology like information and communication, space, bio- and nano - technology, this gap is widening. The challenge now is to enlist technology as an ally in the movement for economic, social and gender equity. The M.S.Swaminathan Research foundation (MSSRF) Choose the imparting of a pro- nature, pro- poor and pro-women orientation to technology development and dissemination as its mandate when it started functioning in Chennai in 1989.

1.1 Information village project

      The dialogue in 1992 was organized on information technology, which gave birth to the information Village project in the union territory of Pondicherry, with financial support from the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada. Since information, is of value to both rural women and men, therefore should be location and time specific. The term knowledge center was used to stress the need for converting generic in to location specific information and for training local women and men in adding value to information. Value - added information is appropriately referred as knowledge and "Rural Knowledge Centers" it can generate opportunities for educated youth in villages to find a career in knowledge management and dissemination. We should train at least a million rural knowledge managers during this decade.

1.2 MSSRF : Guidelines for bridging digital divide

The MSSRF 'S experience in bridging the digital divide in rural India has provided some basic guidelines such as the following for harnessing this powerful tool to cross social, gender, genetic and technological divides.

• Connectivity and content should receive concurrent attention.

• Constraints must be removed on the basis of a malady- remedy analysis; for example, wired and wireless technologies could be used where telephone connections are not adequate or satisfactory. Similarly, solar power can be harnessed where the regular supply of power is irregular. The approach should be based on the principle that is an implemental solution for every problem.

• The information provided should be demand driven and should be relevant to day - to - day life and the work of rural women and men. Also, semi- literate women should be accorded priority in training to operate the center, since this is an effective method of enhancing the self-esteem and social prestige of women living in poverty.

• The knowledge centers should operate on the principle of social inclusion, thereby presenting a win-win situation for all.

• The programme designed to empower rural families with new knowledge and skills should be designed on the basis of antyodaya model, where empowerment starts with the poorest and most underprivileged women and men.

• The local population should have a sense of ownership of the knowledge center. It should be client managed and controlled, so that the information provided is demand and user driven.

• The local population should be willing to make contributions to wards the expenses of the knowledge center, so that the long- term economic sustainability of the programme is ensured. Contributions in cash or kind generate a sense of ownership and pride.

      In a country of over one billion, there are hardly about 5 million computers. 75-80% of these computers are used in offices. Hardly 20% is available for use in development. Therefore, there is no time to relax on the ICT front. RKCs can open a world of information and access to village communities and allow them to provide low-cost services for companies, institutions and individuals. RKCs can distribute SMS [local content] through cell phones to different kinds of people like academicians, traders, doctors, students, etc., train rural youth for web based training through distance learning (MSSRF, 2005).

      In sum, the RKC programme to be successful one needs to address and ensure: People focus and community ownership and Multi stakeholder partnerships and nationwide networks going beyond ICT, content and connectivity, knowledge centres can give a human touch to the whole programme of holistic development. Knowledge Centres should be seen a means cutting across and facilitating development initiatives at the grassroot level.

e-chaupal

       e-Chaupal is an initiative of ITC Limited (a large multi business conglomerate in India) to link directly with rural farmers for procurement of agricultural /aquaculture produce like soybeans, wheat, coffee and prawans. e-Chaupal was conceived to tackle the challenges posed by the unique features of Indian Agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous intermediaries. Traditionally, these commodities were procured in 'mandis' (major agricultural marketing centers in rural areas of India), where the middleman used to make most of the profit. These Middlemen used unscientific means to judge the quality of the product to set the price. Difference in price for good quality and inferior quality was less and hence there was no incentive for the farmers to invest and produce good quality output. With e-Chaupal, the farmers have a choice and the exploitative power of the middleman is neutralized.

      Each ITC Limited kiosk having an access to Internet is run by a Sanchalak-a trained farmer. The computer housed in the sanchalak's house is linked to the Internet via phone lines or by a VSAT connection and serves an average of 600 farmers in the surrounding ten villages within about a 5 km radius. The sanchalak bears some operating cost but in return earns service fee for the e-transactions done through his e-Chaupal. The warehouse hub is managed by the same traditional middle-men, now called samyojaks, but with no exploitative power due to the reorganized role. Indeed these middlemen make up for the lack of infrastructure and fulfill critical jobs like cash disbursement, quantity aggregation and transportation.

      Conceived by ITC in June 2000, e-Chaupal has already become the largest initiative among all Internet based interventions in rural India. e-Chaupal services today reach out to more than half a million farmers growing a range of crops in some 4,500 villages through 770 kiosks across four states (Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh). There are 6,500 e-Chaupals today. ITC Limited plans to scale up to 20,000 e-Chaupals by 2012 covering 100,000 villages in 15 states, servicing 15 million farmers.