Sempatti - ICT for Quality ?

Sempatti visit was refreshing in many ways. It is the first time I had a chance to interpret the word Agriculture in the context of vegetables, fruits, flowers etc. The local farmers in this village, about 25 km from Dindigul, are more of the middle class households who bet on roses, jasmine, drumstick, brinjal etc. The excellent work done by the team at M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) center at Sempatti in aggregating the whole piece is certainly an example to be emulated. Every question of the farmer is recorded and responded within a definite time period (I noticed that there are more outgoing calls from the center than the incoming ones). They have gathered knowledge about the entire supply chain, market dynamics, and more importantly they know all the Krishi Vigyan Kendra scientists,government officials, traders on a personal basis, outside their official relationships. They have earned the trust of the farmers in the villages around Sempatti over a period of almost 5 years , which is evident when they share their trade secrets which they will not divulge to an “Agri Dept” personnel.

A few years ago , Agri prices went ‘online’ for the first time from Ottanchattiram , the nearby wholesale market. The commodities were listed for both their quantities traded and the last price , modeled on the stock exchanges. When I made some enquiries on the current status of that project, there were no satisfactory replies, but the center has excellent contacts with the large buyers/sellers at the market that they still get their “ real-time price updates” on telephone from the market to be disseminated to the farmers.

Information and Communication technologies (ICT) has been acknowledged as a major element in development-the UN General Assembly recently approved the Tunis agenda and the commitment of the World Summit on the Information Society. Many of the ICT initiatives started with disseminating information, but the impact was not very high as there were no avenues to make use of the information. The kiosk models then attempted transactions and tried for a cost recovery, which was largely unsuccessful. Most of the diagnosed reasons for failure were linked to connectivity and statements like “…if only we had better connectivity…” etc were quite common, even among the experts. But if one observes the success stories of the online world, even in commercial marketplace – Amazon, FaceBook, Twitter etc, it did not require a sophisticated high bandwidth connection at the users’ end. The reasons are therefore primarily linked to the mismatched price-value relationship. Today, broadband is a reality in many villages, but the service offerings have not marched alongside the quality of connectivity.

Low-cost access to information infrastructure is a necessary prerequisite for the successful use of ICT by the poor, but it is not sufficient. The implementation of ICT projects needs to be performed by organizations and individuals who have the appropriate incentives to work with marginalized groups. Furthermore, grassroots intermediaries and the involvement of the community are identified as the main factors that foster local ownership and the availability of content and services that respond to the most pressing needs of the poor. There have been only a few successes in the entire country so far with Healthcare and Education leading the way, but the key lesson has always been to deliver high quality services and then worry about cost recovery. Further, the returns have been excellent whenever the online capability is complemented by the offline relationships. Initiatives like Narayana Hridalaya and HMRI have established path breaking models.

Another critical factor here is the spread of ICT to rural India and there are positive signs on the near horizon. Government of India is currently implementing an ambitious project called the Common Services Centers (CSC) initiative to reach the entire rural India, with each CSC covering 5-6 surrounding villages in a honey-comb structure. The encouraging aspect of Indian ICT experience is that the market forces are also not behind in reaching out to rural India. In fact, India is the fastest-growing wireless market in the world and its growth potential is impressive. The dynamic leader behind the ICT initiatives at MSSRF, Senthil Kumaran recently explained the “Green SIM” card initiative launched in collaboration with one of the leading service providers, which provides five free messages/advices/alerts to farmers on a daily basis tailored to their local cultivational needs.

Tail piece :

Here are two anecdotal pieces which might explain the complexity in ‘designing’ programs and modeling the behavioural pattern of rural customers/people:

1. At Ottanchattiram, one can see another ingenuity at work in grabbing the farm produce from the poor : there are intermediaries who pose themselves as farmers at the marketplace and when the small farmers arrive, they offer a price a little higher than the local prices stating that they would not be able to get a better price for their ‘unmarketable lot size’. The farmers return home satisfied with a marginal profit, but the intermediaries then aggregate several transactions like this to convert them to a ‘marketable lot’ and sell in the real market at a higher price and pocket the difference !

2. In Sempatti, many families prefer to work in cotton textile mills, which are atleast 50-75 km away, even for a wage of about Rs.50 per day. The reason : They are picked up from their homes and dropped back at their doorstep on “modern buses on par with the best – shaded glass, cushion seats, attractive colours, sleek design”. Which owner would do this sir ? they ask. Surely the mill owners know a thing or two about their wards. It is also common to borrow and spend without savings, and when time comes for repayment the male members of the family head towards Tiruppur and slog for a few weeks without nightcap and rest and return with some surplus cash to solve cashflow problems.