Empowering farmers in India through video: Interview with Rikin Gandhi

The Agrilinks blog at USAID has an interview with Rikin Gandhi - CEO of Digital Green.

According to the interview, "the unique components of the Digital Green system include:

1. a participatory process for local video production,
2. a human-mediated instruction model for video dissemination and training,
3. a hardware and software technology platform for exchanging data in areas with limited Internet and electrical grid connectivity, and
4. an iterative model to progressively better address the needs and interests of the community with analytical tools and interactive phone-based feedback channels."

ICTs: Enabling innovation for enhancing rural livelihoods

December 3-7, 2012 will see India host an international conference on ways to that information and communication technologies are enhancing rural livelihoods.

Further details on the event website

India launches rice knowledge management portal

On 16 July, the Indian Prime Minister launch a new rice portal. The portal will help stakeholders to get information on all aspects of rice.

The Rice Knowledge Management Portal (RKMP), funded by National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), would use various ICT (information technology and communication) tools to provide info even on mobile phones.

The portal is built on web 2.0 standards and caters to the location specific information needs of many stakeholders throughout India.

There seem to be 2 different versions:

http://www.rkmp.co.in/ or http://rkmp.iari.res.in/.

New book: ICTs for agriculture and rural development

Our colleague Raj Saravanan has co-authored a new book 'Information and Communication Technology for Agriculture and Rural Development' with a wide range of chapters covering the e-agriculture world in India.

Get more information about this book - and his other related publications.

Open access repositories for Indian agricultural research

India’s National Agricultural Research System (NARS) is one of the world’s largest, with 26,178 full-time equivalent research staff functioning in government, public and higher education institutions and universities.

In this article in Current Science, the authors give an overview of the ways in which agricultural research knowledge in India could be made much more opena nd accessible.

Download the article

Exploring voice-driven web for the developing world

Accessing the Web has become so easy for so many that it's startling to learn that less than a quarter of the global population can connect to the Internet External Link, according to Internet World Stats. Meanwhile, the penetration of mobile phones — especially in developing countries — is much larger.

Which is why IBM Research India in New Dehli has launched what it calls the Spoken Web, a network designed to use phones, not computers, to bring information on the Web to mainly under-served populations that cannot readily experience the Web's benefits.

Read more ...

Agrocom – QnA Service meets Rural India

IIT Bombay startup 'Agrocom' is building up a QnA service for rural India - the company has a pool of experts who answer queries from farmers.

The company’s flagship product, aaQUA (stands for Almost All Questions Answered) was started as a student project (networking site for farmers) and saw some initial traction which led the team to focus more on bringing experts to answer these questions (related to agriculture produce, legal issues regarding land titles, crop management and dealing with Pests & insects).

Read more ...

Nokia launches rural information service in China

Nokia is bringing Ovi Life Tools, a set of informational services for rural areas in developing countries, to China, the company said on Friday.

The SMS-based service will be in simplified Chinese, the written form of the language used in mainland China. The services are split into four categories: healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment.

More:

Ovi Life Tools lands in China

Rural Calling: Can Nokia Sustain Its First-mover Advantage?

Indian Council of Agricultural Research journals go open access

ICAR has decided to allow open access to its research journals online for the benefit of students, researchers and farmers for free nationally and internationally.

The journals namely, Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Journal of Animal Sciences are published monthly by ICAR.

The journals are accessible from the ICAR website from March 2010 onwards.

Socio-Economic Impact of Mobile Phones on Indian Agriculture

This working paper from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations investigates a series of questions: What kind of information do farmers value the most to improve agricultural productivity? Do mobile phones and mobile-enabled agricultural services have an impact on agriculture? What are the factors that impede the realisation of the full productivity enhancing potential of mobile phones?

The study found evidence that mobiles are being used in ways which contribute to
productivity enhancement. However, to leverage the full potential of information
dissemination enabled by mobile telephony will require significant improvements in
supporting infrastructure and capacity building amongst farmers to enable them to use
the information they access effectively.

A 'Cyberary' at India's National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management

A novel concept and a new center of learning is the MANAGE Cyberary, which integrates the services of Information Technology and the Library to provide a single point access to information irrespective of the form in which it exists. Aptly named after Chaudhury Charan Singh, a farmers’ friend who struggled for the uplift of the farmers and the rural economy, the cyberary is a point for information acess and connectivity for the literate, semi-literate and illiterate alike.

The Cyberary integrates state of the art information technology with traditional services bringing together all the modes of the information system available in MANAGE into one integrated system. The focus is on providing a gateway for clients, to access information resources as well as network with the whole world on the Internet and through Videonet.

VAS for farmers : The new market

Rural VAS is gradually surpassing the realms of the SMS and voice. The simple farmer is set to walk into an era of digital revolution. The sight of a farmer sending and receiving immediate updates using mobile devices, including phone cameras may no longer remain a dream. However, that may not happen very soon as these devices are very expensive and also farmers will need to be trained to use them.

A small step in this direction is a scheme developed by UK based Sheffield Hallam University that recently won the Manthan South Asia Digital Empowerment Award. The scheme enables farmers in rural India to get tailored and expert advice on resolving problems with their crops.

Read more ....

In India: rural inventors are driving changes

The Asia Times Online informs about Gupta's 21-year-old Honey Bee Network that has compiled an unprecedented database of 140,000 innovations created by farmers, villagers and small-town inventors. Many have no formal education or technical training. Teams of Honey Bee volunteers scout across India to hunt out local innovations, inventions and traditional knowledge practices.

The Honey Bee Network of rural and small-town inventors, academics, scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers and volunteers gather, pool, develop and share know-how from a mass-based, much-ignored source.

Read the full article

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University launches community radio and agritech portal

In October 2009, TNAU launched a new portal and community radio. The community 'e-radio' is integrated into the University's e–Extension network and aims to "compile, record, edit and fine tune the content of the technologies for the benefit of farmers, farm women, youth and other stakeholders in the broad domain of agriculture and rural development."

The AgriTech portal also links to the University's 'Agricultural Technology Information Centre' that "provides a ‘single window’ delivery system for agricultural information;" the Kisan network of agricultural call centers that deliver extensio services and "respond to issues raised by farmers, instantly, in the local language." It also lists a range of other ICT and agriculture initiatives in India

Information and ICT management presentations from MANAGE

Dr. A. S. Charyulu of the library at India's National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management has shared some of his presentations on slideshare. They include:

• How to collect information for writing a success story in agriculture
  
• ICT-enabled services for agricultural development in India
  
• Public-Private Partnership in Market-led Extension:Case Studies
  

Reaching the unreached: Community based village knowledge centres in India

Suchit Nanda and Subbiah Arunachalam from the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation have just released a book entitled Reaching the unreached: Community based village knowledge centres and village resource centres.

Since 1992, the Foundation has pioneered ICT-enabled development activities through Village Resource Centres (VRCs) and Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs). They use both traditional and modern technologies to provide necessary information/knowledge to the rural communities. The book tells the stories of the people who work with and eenfit from these centres. It also sets out steps needed to establish a successful rural telecenter of this type:

Step 0: Self-assessment
Step 1: Social Mobilization and Need / Demand Assessment
Step 2: Community Participation
Step 3: Connectivity
Step 4: Content
Step 5: Hub and Spokes Model
Step 6: Management, Monitoring and Evaluation
Step 7: Services
Step 8: Partnership
Step 9: Capacity Building
Step 10: Sustainability

Transformative impact of ICT: Change stories from rural India

Arundhathi, Suchit Nanda and Subbiah Arunachalam from the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation have just released a book entitled Transformative Impact of ICT: Change stories from rural India. Through a series of illustrated chapters, it presents twelve stories that show how ICTs have changed and transformed the lives of rural people in India.

Tacit knowledge and innovation capacity: Evidence from the Indian livestock sector

To cope and compete in this rapidly-changing world, organisations need to access and apply new knowledge. While explicit knowledge is important, what is often critical is an organisation’s ability to create, access, share and apply the tacit or un-codified knowledge that exists among its members, its network and the wider innovation system of which it is a part.

This UNU-MERIT discussion paper explores the role of tacit knowledge in livestock sector innovation capacity though the case of Visakha Dairy, one of the most progressive producer-owned milk marketing companies in India. Analysis of two episodes in Visakha’s evolution clearly illustrates how it used tacit knowledge to innovate around challenges.

The paper concludes that while tacit knowledge is clearly a major resource that organisations rely on to cope with change, it does not follow that knowledge management approaches that rely on codifying this knowledge are the way forward.
Instead, what it does suggest is that better management of the learning processes, through which tacit knowledge is generated, would be a more useful contribution to innovation and innovation capacity — in other words, a shift from knowledge management to learning management.

Download the report

More on innovation in rural development

Nokia Life Tools for farmers and rural communities

Nokia may be a name most would associate with handsets and great user interfaces. But increasingly, the Fin is focusing on solutions and services. We take a look at the launch of Life Tools, which targets an interesting segment in the emerging market of India.

Following this, the service will be rolled out in Indonesia, which will make it the first country in Southeast Asia to get the Nokia solution.

First talked about in November 2008, Life Tools is a service tailored for farmers and rural communities living in remote areas, providing them with information specific to their livelihood and personal enrichment.

Read more ...

RML India ties-up to expand mobile information service for Indian growers

Thomson Reuters today announced that its ground-breaking mobile information service for India’s agricultural community Reuters Market Light has teamed up with Future Group’s Aadhaar Retailing Limited (ARL), a leading end to end solution provider for rural communities across key states in India.

With this tie-up Reuters Market Light (RML) looks at expanding its pioneering personalized mobile information service to the huge farming community across the country.

Read more ...