Attitude of Farmers towards ITC's e-Choupal: Comparison between Users and Non-Users

A large number of information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives have been taken up at the national as well as state level for dissemination of knowledge and information to the rural population. ITC Ltd. initiated e-choupal in June 2000 to cater to agriculture-related needs of the farmers. One major factor that directly affects adoption of any ICT initiative and success is the attitude of the audience towards it. Thus, an effort has been made to study the attitude of the user farmers and non-user farmers towards this programme. The study has been carried out in the Tarai region of Uttarakhand. Purposive sampling was done to select the Udham Singh Nagar district and simple random sampling was done to select the centres from two hubs - Kashipur and Kichcha. In all, 220 farmers (110 users and 110 non-users) were selected for the study. The findings indicate that e-choupal has considerably provided some insights into the attitude of farmers towards the programme. The attitude of the users was better than that of the non-users towards e-choupal and its components, as majority of the users had moderately favourable attitude towards the ITC Ltd. sanchalak as well as services provided at the e-choupal, whereas comparatively less number of non-users felt so.