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Cyber Makeover

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The

Indian Farmers Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) is backed by over 37,000 member

societies. The rural portal of IFFCO was launched in 2001 at a small scale.

Commonly referred to as the ICT initiative at IFFCO, the content has been

developed in eight Indian languages and caters to 16 states.

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Typically, huge amount

of information is floating in the agriculture sector, which is either not

available. The agri-portal gives information on a large number of areas relevant

to the farmer. It also gives harvest prices for different states. District-wise

information furnished by the Ministry of Agriculture is available for principal

crops. In addition, the portal provides Mandi prices or wholesale prices of

crops. Currently, information is available on 82-120 crops depending on the

state. 

It is just not enough

for provide adequate and correct information to farmers. Dissemination is a

critical component of the entire process. For appropriate dissemination, IFFCO

has set up over 100 kiosks in different parts of the country today. These kiosks

are equipped with touch screen PCs and dot matrix printers. 

Brief audio summaries

are also available on touch screen computers. Education is a very important part

fo the initiative. Typically, IFFCO is looking at an each-one-teach-one as

medium of education and promotion. Company officials would always be ready help

at the kiosks to educate farmers on how to operate computers and understand the

portal. IFFCO is also trying to take assistance from local agricultural

graduates to act as facilitators.

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At a Glance

Issue:

Information Dissemination



Reason: Lack of adequate agricultural information to IFFCO Members


Vendor/solution: In-house; web portal


Benefits

  • Extend

    IT enabled services to farmers and cooperatives to promote IT

    penetration and improve IT comfort levels in rural India

  • To

    extend e-services to cooperative members of IFFCO and in a phased

    manner, extend e-commerce through the website

  • Provide

    latest and reliable information and extend other services to all those

    actively involved in the development of Indian agriculture and rural

    development

  • Provide

    necessary information/services for suppliers to IFFCO and plans to

    achieve e-procurement in a phased manner

Touch screen PCs are in

the Rs 75,000-85,000 range. Therefore, IFFCO has replaced them with normal PCs

in areas where the educational-level is higher. This would cover rural

destination that are closer to large cities where farmers and villagers had

attained minimum basic education.

IFFCO is also using

their member cooperatives to help farmers learn email usage through phonetic

keyboards and multi-lingual email available in 12 different languages.

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The kiosks access

information from the central server at Gurgaon. At the kiosks, information is

available offline and updation is just a single click away. The platform used is

Windows and IFFCO's in-house IT team comprising four people developed the

portal. Domain experts, though not dedicated members of the team, are available

at specific locations to cater to location-specific content requirement.

All expenditure

incurred is currently absorbed by IFFCO. However, plans are afoot to bring down

recurring expenses. For example, some of the bigger societies are being asked to

share recurring costs such as connectivity and power. IFFCO is also trying to

get members to make use to the portal for sales. Cooperatives are also being

asked to build a revenue model around the portal.

Bhaswati Chakravorty 



bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in

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