Rural Internet (Contd.)

This post is in continuation to the problem expressed in a post by Sam Mason (Rural Internet). A very important point discussed there is that majority of development discussion and initiatives that we start online are hardly available to the target population. Working mostly online, we have started to take it as granted that this broadband internet speed will be available to everyone using internet. Web technologies are growing at a rate faster than ever. Thanks to platforms like Wordpres, Drupal etc., making a website for any purpose is easier than ever. There were times when we used to write entire html code (No CSS!!) and try hard to make the site beautiful (using marquee and blinks too!). Using images for site elements wasn’t a good option as the “dial-up” internet speed would take its whole long time to fetch a small image. Other useful media like audio or video were not even considered.

When broadband internet came, speeds took an instant shift from around ~44 kbps to 256 kbps. The web moved faster, and our hopes grew more. At least now images were not at all an issue. For videos, well we could always let them buffer and then see it all together later. Most of us still preferred some downloadable video over this buffering technique. So with increasing network speed, our demands changed all of a sudden. And as web developers, we had this plethora of elements to play with and make beautiful websites.

And now when on an average we have network speed of 2 Mbps available with us, the way web was used has changed. If we’re reading a long list of text we don’t create page1, page2 …page n. We just keep scrolling and scrolling. The very design of a site is now based on all time good speed internet connectivity. If you scrolled down too long and then just clicked something by mistake, a “back” won’t be that quick again. Same goes with You Tube videos. The “let it buffer” thing doesn’t work now. It has become smarter. If you don’t keep watching, it won’t buffer further. Yes sure this saves unnecessary extra download, but you can’t keep a video available at once with an option to view it little later.

This design is still very good and positive. We are ultimately going to move towards all time high speed internet only. But in developing countries, it doesn’t fit that nicely as of now. When we talk about development with the help of ICTs, user interface is one of the primary concerns. The more beautiful and illustrative it is, the better it can serve users. When we hope to educate and inform relatively low literate users via internet, we would prefer such interfaces. But a barrier here is that they don’t have access to good broadband speeds. And even if the network line is there, power availability is very low. How do they keep their modem working for long? If we try using Smartphone, then again GPRS speed is very low and 3G packages are too expensive. As important as it is to use rich media for development, we need to focus more on the underlying framework. Fighting this barrier of low speed internet and high prices of better speed is an important challenge. People like us working on development through ICT don’t quite have to authority to control prices in rural areas. But we sure can build technologies to somehow find the right mix. We need to consider every element of our target environment before designing technologies for them. Internet is definitely the most usable platform for ICTD, but its ‘speed’ is not too great in the rural areas. Let’s build dedicated technologies and use them practically in the available environment.

Radio, and its relation with Agriculture

Radio has always been one of the most widespread modes of broadcasting. Since a long time ago, it has been the primary source of information in remote areas. In India, All India Radio provides radio service throughout the nation. Apart from this though, many other radio services also exist. Radio has played major role in mobilizing masses at the time of the independence movement in our country and continues to be used as a medium of information consumption and recreation by large number of people in India. Even today, television and internet have not penetrated into the country as much as Radio. One factor behind it being so popular has been the low cost of Radio. A small receiver can be purchased and it connects the user to a world full of information and entertainment. With clear and visible advantages, radio has been used to send social messages and guidance to people. Agriculture itself has rightfully made use of radio. People in remote villages with small farms also have access to Agriculture news and guidance services via radio. Indian Agriculture Research Institute has provided assistance to farmers through radio. Government stations also hold small sessions where they invite speakers to discuss on various agriculture issues. There have also been a number of radio based ICT initiatives specific to agriculture that impart information about a wide range of things such as crops, oilseeds and pulses, horticulture, seed, fertilizer, plant protection, machinery, rain fed farming, natural resources management, agriculture marketing, plan and policy and new practices in agriculture. Some of them such as Krishi Jagat on All India Radio (AIR) also share success stories of farmers.

Within its capacity, radio is being used to maximize information distribution. But one of the major issues with using radio is that it is a one-way communication channel. Feedback from listeners is not possible on radio. In order to facilitate communication between the listeners and the radio channels, other technologies have to be integrated along. For the same cause, an interesting direction being taken up by a number of initiatives nowadays is to augment the radio with ICT tools to make it a 2-way communication channel. GramVaani and AvaajOtala are examples of such systems working in India. Farm Radio International, Freedom Fone, and Frontline SMS Radio are active in Africa. We will see more details about each of these initiatives in future posts on the blog. As per [1], there is a 50% more likelihood of farmers adopting new agricultural practices when they are actively engaged in the generation of content on the radio channels and their feedback is sought than those who are just passive listeners to these radio channels. The essence of advancing radio as a continued source of distribution is that people are most familiar with it. Mobile phones are the only other technology which has spread into remote areas like radio. And with these initiatives, both can be integrated to maximize support and assistance for rural farmers. We still haven’t reached the ultimate solution, but every small step towards the cause is to be respected and appreciated. Hopefully, radio will continue to be as helpful as it has always been.

[1] Farm Radio Report. Farm Radio International. Available from:  http://www.farmradio.org/wp-content/uploads/farmradio-prcreport20111.pdf

Farmers from a small village in Rajasthan – Sustaining in the absence of Information

In the earlier post in this section, we talked about a farmer from Madhya Pradesh. This one is now based on a conversation we had with a group of 8 farmers from Rajasthan (north-western India). This was again an interesting conversation with a group composed of farmers from varied age groups ranging from 26 years to even 61 years. But all of them, coming from nearby villages had similar agricultural practices growing mostly food crops such as wheat, millet, jowar, etc. They were small farmers with land holding size averaging around just 3 hectare, with the minimum being only a hectare and the maximum being around 7 hectare. This discussion primarily highlighted the lack of guidance available for Indian farmers. We asked questions regarding various climatic and geographical parameters that might affect their crop. All of them did consider factors such as atmospheric humidity, atmospheric temperature, soil temperature, annual rainfall, daylight period etc as important parameters in making the right decision for providing the agricultural inputs to the crop. It was appalling to hear them say that they had no means of getting this information. The only help these farmers were taking was to get knowledge about market prices by calling the mandi officials from the mobile phones they possessed. They also had access to some magazines which would impart them information about the current agricultural practices. Mostly they said they relied for advice on the elderly in their villages who had been farming since years. On being asked if they were aware of various government schemes available for the farmers, they said yes they were due to the advertisements on radio and television but were also quick to add that the schemes had been of no use to them. They had no help whatsoever in picking the right fertilizers for their crop. In fact they believed that ‘more the fertilizer, more the benefit’. They were living in total oblivion of the negative effects of using fertilizers in excess. Some of the farmers also confined in us that they had to follow the illegitimate ways to be able to procure fertilizers. Similarly they had no idea whether their soil was acidic or basic, and hence obviously were not taking any measures to control the same. Again they said they had no means of getting their soil tested and get informed about all this. The nearest mandi (market) where they would go to sell their produce was as far as 10-12 km away.

The need of helping these farmers is what keeps us motivated to work towards our project GreenSky. This discussion didn’t include any great success or availability of support. But a ray of hope we identified in this discussion was the comfort these farmers had with the use of mobile phones. All of them could make phone calls, send text messages and easily navigate the menu, except farmers aged around more than 50. The younger ones among them could even manage using internet on the phone (and had told us the same quite excitedly). With the penetration of mobile phones even in rural India, and the dipping price of Smartphone makes us positive. We believe we can make the best of this technology and use it rightfully to provide information that the farmers require. There are various uses of mobile phones which can be brought into application at this level. One such effort of ours with its initial concept can be seen in [1]. We are determined to bring ICT to the maximum support of our farmers and we’ll continue working for this. Good informed days with continuous support will soon be there for our farmers.

[1] Agrawal, R., Atray, M., Sundari, S.K., 2012. Concept to design a hand-held crop management device (CMD) for farmers. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (ACM DEV ’12).

Tata Kisan Kendra – A wonderful inititative

Tata Kisan Kendra (TKK) is an initiative by Tata Chemicals Limited (part of the Tata group) with the following objective: “To provide the farmer with a package of inputs and services for optimum utilization of balanced primary nutrients; plant protection chemicals; water; seeds; post-harvest services; and to develop a genuine partnership with the farmer”. It is one of the initiatives taken up by big business groups aiming towards improving the quality of life of Indian farmers. TKKs are designed to be one-stop centers for all agricultural problems. They thus offer a wide range of services. They provide the farmers with trusted agro inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides at affordable prices. They also provide the facility for farmers to lease out farm equipment and implements, enabling farmers to use modern machinery even if they can’t afford it. They maintain a library of journals and magazines to help keep the farmers upto date with the new techniques and latest developments. Also they provide agronomy services such as soil testing, soil mapping and fertilizer testing. Training coupled with demos is also provided to the farmers by faculty members from universities and government institutions working in the area of agriculture. TKKs also have the provision for facilities such as crop insurance and other credit facilities. It is currently active in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. An interesting feature of this initiative is that it not only focuses on better information, equipment and knowledge to the farmers regarding agriculture, but also aims at an overall development for the farming community. To be a member of TKK is a matter of pride and is based on factors such as literacy, land owned, age and progressiveness of thought. Training regarding farming is also provided to the farmer’s wives. Moreover, they are also taught about health, hygiene, child-care and things such as embroidery and sewing. There are also certain student awards for the children. Exhibition halls at these centers organize educational, social and also entertainment events in order to build better relations between farmers and their families. TKKs are a great example of support to Indian agricultures which have improved and enhanced themselves with time. GreenSky India salutes this campaign and sees this initiative as a role model for development in Indian agriculture

Reuters Market Light – An SMS based initiative for Indian farmers

Reuters Market Light (RML) [1], an initiative started by Thomson Reuters, is an information service started in 2007. RML targets information provision to Indian farmers via mobile phones. RML subscribers receive information via text messages on mobile phones, which is personalized based on the stage of the crop cycle and at the taluka level for weather forecasts. They also provide information about local market prices and local and international commodity information. Since personalization is a key factor in this service, one prominent feature of RML is that this information can be accessed by the farmer in his local language. So overall, a farmer gets much of the necessary information in his language through mobile phone SMS.

This initiative has recorded 1 million unique subscribers so far in an estimated 50,000 villages across 13 states. RML believes that farmers tend to prefer text messages over a phone call as that information remains stored in the phone and can be understood more easily. But the only bottleneck for this interface in a country like ours is that of literacy. This limits the range of people who can gain benefits from such a scheme. This initiative is an example of how making the right information available to the farmer in a timely fashion can help them improve farm yields and hence improve their conditions. A study conducted by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) claims that they observed 5-25% increase in the incomes of the RML subscribers interviewed by them.

Our country needs more initiatives like these and we need to brainstorm on how this information can be communicated to every farmer of the country and give him the right guidance needed by him. It is implementation of simple ideas that can bring real change. RML realized the importance of local language. Provision of information in local language breaks the fear from technology also. Computers and mobile phones were not considered comfortable for rural India before hindi fonts came into play. With language support, much more interest can be observed from user end. ICTs can definitely bring a significant change in Indian agriculture system if we use them smartly and understand the needs properly. RML’s success story can be seen in a timeline on their site [2].

[1]  Reuters Market Light. Thomson Reuters. Available from: http://www.reutersmarketlight.com/index.html

[2]  Key Milestones, Reuters Market Light. Thomson Reuters. Available from: http://www.reutersmarketlight.com/milestones.html

Warana Project – An Early ICT Initiative in Indian Agriculture

The Warana Wired Village Project was started in 1998 by a non-governmental cooperative organization. This service is currently active mostly in Maharashtra, providing service to over 70 villages. It aimed at setting up various booths with computers which would be connected via the internet. Hence the farmers could access information not only related to agriculture but also education, health etc. The Warana project was hence an initiative focusing on the overall development of the farming community, rather than being specific to agriculture. Farmers could access six web based applications from these booths which were: employment and agricultural schemes, government procedures, crop information, water supply details, medical facilities, bus and railway timetables and automated assistance in completing applications for government documents such as ration cards and birth and death certificates.

This initiative was started with good hope and dedicated objectives, but wasn’t maintained in a proper fashion. As reported later in a study conducted by researchers from University of California (UC), Berkley, Microsoft Research India (MSRI) and Cognizant Technologies, Bangalore. The booths had computers installed, but some of them were not in working conditions. The PCs were covered with dust as PC covers had been misplaced, and at various places the cables had been chewed by rats. In the year of 2005, the PCs were running Windows 95 only. The computers did have internet connectivity but it was no faster than 10 kb/s. Therefore the researchers then revamped the Warana Wired Village project by replacing the PC-based system by a mobile phone based system. Here only relevant amount of data is transferred to farmers via SMS. They reported in a publication based on the study [1] that the new system was found to be less expensive, more convenient, and more popular with farmers than the previous PC-based system.

[1]       Veeraraghavan, R., Yasodhar, N., & Toyama, K., 2009. Warana Unwired: Replacing PCs with Mobile Phones in a Rural Sugarcane Cooperative. Information Technologies & International Development [online], 5(1). Available from:  http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/327