ICT Initiatives and Agricultural Communication in India

Communication not only promotes the benejits of good agricultural practices but it also keeps the policy makers informed about the hardships faced and compels them to take strong measures and initiatives to support agriculture in these areas. With the growth and development of agricultural communication, there has been a shift from traditional method of communication to technology led communication or ICT enabled agricultural information. The government of India has also given special to ICT and agriculture through various schemes and programmes. A part from Government's initiatives, thousands of civil society organizations have also contributed in strengthening the ICT and agricultural development in form of community radio centres, e-Suchana Kendra (e-information centres) etc. However, there is a Velt need to understand how these ICT initiatives perform at different levels of society and are contributing for the development of agriculture. The major objective of this paper is to understand the performance of different ICTs in different parts of the India and come out with strategic analysis to streng then these initiatives. Under the study information related to 26 ICT initiatives used for dissemination of agriculture related information viz. mobile phone, telephone, call centre, kiosk, Internet, and community radio from different part of the country were analysed. The primary data was collected with extensive field visits and by interacting with different stakeholders of ICT initiatives. The views of the beneficiary farmers were taken using qualitative and quantitative methods. Thus, it is based on a pan India study of the agriculture communication initiatives. It also recommends the steps to strengthen different facets of agriculture communication -technology, content, process, and the communication utilization support.