Rural Development

This summary is part of a research project carried out between March and October 2006 in support of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), one of The Communication Initiative (The CI)'s partners.

A well-developed rural area in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Warana’s primary economic activity consists of sugar cane growing and harvesting, according to this case study. Warana’s strong cooperative movement, the Warana Group of Co-operatives (WGC), includes approximately 50,000 farmers in 100 villages within the cooperative’s area. WGC is currently facing issues that include low sugar prices and challenges in coordinating the cooperative’s many activities, resulting in a loss of transparency and efficiency.

Initiated in 1998 by Prime Minister’s Office Information Technology (IT) Task Force, the Warana “Wired Village” project was intended to bring agricultural, educational, and market information to Warana Nagar villages and to simplify the cooperative’s business operations.

The following were the primary objectives of this project:

• Increasing the efficiency and productivity of the operations of the sugar cane cooperative;
• Providing Warana villages with a range of information and services, including access to information about crops and market prices in the local language, educational opportunities, and government employment schemes.

Fifty-four village information kiosks facilitate the sugar cane production process by recording annual registrations for plantation, issuing harvesting permits, and coordinating payment information. Each kiosk has a computer and printer, and most have email and internet access and wireless connectivity to the main sugar administrative building. Farmers regularly visit the kiosks, where kiosk operators feed the data provided by the farmers into computers for coordinated processing. The kiosks issue farmers with payment slips for payments deposited directly into farmers’ bank accounts, sell farmers fertiliser using credit, and enter into the system money spent on transporting the crop to the sugar factory.

Warana was an already empowered community that was able to leverage information and communication technologies (ICTs) to increase efficiency and transparency in its main economic activity of sugar cane production. The community's fair level of human development and infrastructure enabled it to use ICT to allow its people greater access to information via the internet.

Efficiency in sugar cane growing and harvesting has already been achieved in terms of time and money. At a village kiosk, farmers are able to find out immediately how much they earned during a harvest, and computerisation has resulted in improved management and cost savings in fertiliser stocks.

ICT has the potential for many applications in Warana, including allowing farmers access to agricultural information that could improve their livelihood, and access to government services via the internet.

Four key lessons can be drawn from an examination of the Warana “Wired Village” project:

Assessing the information needs of the community:

A needs assessment of the community must be carried out before the launching of ICT initiatives. Information that directly impacts on people’s livelihoods is the most important element to consider when developing a strategy.

Local ownership and participation:

The community must be continuously involved with the development of content and software applications. Community ownership and participation in application development help to ensure sustainability, while applications developed from the top-down are less likely to be sustained.

Women and economically poor people’s access:

Women and people within the economically poorest groups of the community seldom access the internet and other services at the information kiosks. These groups risk becoming further marginalised if they are not involved in ICT use, and do not know to access information on employment and educational opportunities at the kiosks.

Empowering grassroots operators:

Grassroots operators, such as the majority of kiosk operators in Warana, have great potential to leverage ICT to improve their communities’ standards of living if provided with the right incentives. Many operators believe in the potential of ICT to create positive change in their communities, and have the skills, training, or motivation to spearhead efforts to do so if incentives are made available.