Final Report

CGI AR I CT-KM Support for the

Virtual Academy for the Semi Arid Tropics (VASAT)

Final Report

Presented by

I nternational Crops Research I nstitute for the Semi-Arid Topics

In association with

I nternational Livestock Research I nstitute, South Asia Office

I nternational Water Management I nstitute, South Asia Office

Patancheru PO 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India

March 2007

Summary of Progress: April-December 2006

Outputs and Milestones since last report (Period covered: April-December 2006):

The project was granted a no-cost extension up to December 2006 to facilitate conduct of the ICRISAT –commissioned external review.

• Second Annual Report covering the period up to March 2006 submitted in April 2006. • Impact assessment in relation to the research-extension linkages on this project carried out during June-August 2006; an external expert carried out the assessment and presented a report. • One consultation with NARES partners on emerging new approaches to research-extension linkages held in June 2006; a detailed report on VASAT field activities and their linkages with local extension prepared (received the best paper award in the annual meeting of the Indian Society for Extension, December 2006). • ICRISAT commissioned external review for Knowledge Management and Sharing program conducted an assessment of VASAT activities and recommended its expansion to other regions with second generation trials (November 2006). • Final report comprising the two reports above, and a technical report for the period up to December 2006 prepared.

VASAT Report: April –December 2006

Summary

I n the following pages, a concise report on activities on the VASAT project during 2005-06 is provided. The project objectives are:

1. Build and facilitate a consortium of Communities of Practice in drought coping and mitigation using the expertise of CG centers, particularly those submitting this proposal. 2. Develop non-formal instructional material and corresponding courseware for drought coping and mitigation. 3. Pilot a repository of learning objects relevant to the sector and develop a model for their transformation into learning materials. 4. Design and test an I CT-based knowledge and information exchange model that links rural families and their organizations w ith international/ national centers of excellence in combating drought and desertification; assess the sustainability factors. 5. Assess the impact of knowledge sharing on the capacity of rural families to cope better with drought and desertification; and study the impact on agricultural extension. 6. Evolve a common approach, with relevant CG I CT-KM projects, especially the CG-OLR, to promote virtual learning in agriculture.

Activities in the reporting period were designed to fulfill these objectives, with a focus on assessing the impact and sustainability of a technology-mediated system for rural information services. Two reports, one on the impact of the I CT- based rural hub operations on the extension processes in the area in South Central I ndia, and another on the usefulness of the extension linkages mediated by the I CT, were prepared, discussed and made available in the public domain. The VASAT web site was re-organised to allow for learning resources online to be accessed granularly, rather than as packages. The engagement and dialogue with NARES partners continued vigorously over this period. Two of the CSO partners were invited to present their collaborative work with this project at the CSO- CGI AR Forum during the AGM06. The framework for generating and maintaining linkages between agricultural research-education and extension has been accepted by the National Agricultural I nnovation Project of I ndia as the framework for its own investment in KM in I ndian agriculture. The Center Commissioned External Review of I CRI SAT’s KMS program has advised the center management to develop a more comprehensive VASAT program through second generation trials over more agro-eco-regions.

2 From VASAT: Second Annual Report 2005-2006

Progress of Project Activities Measured Against the Original Timelines Proposed

First Annual Report: Submitted E-Training for ODL Partners: Carried out for four agricultural universities ODL Workshops: Jointly with E-training activities; report attached E-Training for Extensionists: Training courses organized at the rural hub Extension workshop: Conducted for the newly inducted rural leaders of the National Virtual Academy; multiple stakeholders joined in.

Report on rural hubs: Attached LO Repository Consultation: Senior Directors, Deans and Vice-Chancellors participated in the Consultation; organized with the COL.

LO Repository Report: Joint activity with the CG-OLR project; report Attached

Trials on Rapid production: Continuing, using two LMS NARES hub management training: Organized in combination with the extension workshops

Second Annual Report: Attached

Significant outputs of VASAT Project during 2005-06 : (Relates to Monitoring and Evaluation Planning Worksheet for VASAT)

• ODL workshop was organized; domain experts in agri and vet sciences were engaged in a week-long workshop and exposed to design and development of content for e-learning and learning content management systems.

• Addakal Hub has been strengthened; new capacity strengthening processes in relation to extension have been put on stream; a new infrastructure for video conferencing has been donated by two national agencies; the women volunteers in Addakal on this project have been honored with the Fellowship of the National Virtual Academy by the President of India

• New Partnerships Developed; with the well-known Indian Institutes of Technology System, in applying GIS at a micro-level, in the use of semantic web technologies and in the use of weather sensors; also with Microsoft Community Affairs to extend the hub operations.

• A roundtable consultation involving senior directors of outreach programs, deans and vice-chancellors of agri and vet universities was held for Setting Up Online Grids of Educational and Extension Materials and for Capacity Strengthening in February 2006; the universities agreed to pursue this by committing their time and resources. A pilot learning program on drought awareness in Maharashtra organized with a new, non-traditional partner (MKCL) had nearly 30000 registrants over six months.

• VASAT materials along with a significant volume of online materials were contributed to the CG-OLR repository.

• The functional arrangement for inter-center coordination is in place; VASAT actors in different CG centers met regularly on a monthly basis.

• NARES partnership strengthened by ensuring their participation in rural hubs work and farmer interaction involving new tools such as the Internet and videoconferencing.

• A number of invited presentations were made in national and international meetings; young scholars presented some of these.

II From VASAT: First Annual Report 2004-2005

Progress of Project Activities Measured Against the Original Timelines Proposed

Coalition Consultation: Carried out in Asia during 28-29 June 2004

Recruitment: Completed in July 2004; manager for Asia joined later in October 04 (procedural delay in availing deputation)

WG (on content and coordination) operationalised: regular monthly meetings among participating centers taking place; content modules numbering 15 have been created and validated;

SC meeting: held on 28th June 2004 in Patancheru

I dentify two hubs: completed by August 2004; Kahe in Niger, West Africa, launched in September 04; Addakal in AP State, India, is operational; new hub in Gabi, Niger, started up in Jan. 2005.

First RRA Report: RRA carried out in Kahe and consultation meeting held in July 2004

Modules designed: ongoing activity; 15 modules already designed and made available online

Rural Onsite Training: Elaborate training took place in Addakal in India during Oct-Dec 04. Hub manager recognized nationally. Training ongoing in Kahe, Niger.

R-I CT components installed: Addakal has expanded services to three more villages; basic IT infrastructure in place; PC and basic power equipment installed in Kahe and satellite radio system activated.

CMS design and testing: started in July 04 and is in an advanced stage now; Sun platform is in use; one major peer reviewed publication; all modules loaded for creating learning objects.

WG on Evaluation: work commenced with graduate level training; new links with ICRISAT Theme on markets approved by ICRISAT.

Second RRA: ongoing in India; report under preparation

Meta-material addition: ongoing process with 15 modules.

First Annual report: Attached.

Significant outputs of VASAT Project during 2004-05: (Relates to Monitoring and Evaluation Planning Worksheet for VASAT)

• SC meeting was held; valuable suggestions, especially in positioning VASAT as a provider of downstream adaptable material on drought related topics. (June 29, 2004)

• Two workshops with ICT4D and ODL experts: Asian regional workshop organized in June 2004; new partners in both these sectors gained; another one to take place in second half of 2005, focusing more on extension and outreach.

• One workshop with extension experts: held in association with the Commonwealth of Learning in Jan 05. An informal network of five agricultural universities in India formed; VASAT will provide expert advice on ICT-mediation in extension education (non-degree programs); workshop planned in July 05 (see above).

• Trial of novel CMS for LO’s: Commenced in July 04 and is in an advanced stage; one peer reviewed publication in Feb 05; active discussions with the OLR project actors continuing. A pilot system to create learning objects from regular instructional material set up. New capacity built.

• Two rural info hubs with access to the Web: One in India (Addakal, AP State) and another in Niger (Kahe) set up and are fully operational; Addakal hub has already started extending services to three rural access points.

• A functional arrangement for inter-center coordination is in place; regular, monthly meetings of all the concerned experts, associates and scholars take place. Strong partnership with NARS partners established, and NARS experts participate in VASAT field activities. Participation in VRC meeting in May 05 will further strengthen inter- center collaboration.

• Opportunities for participation in professional meetings, especially those organized by NARS, are large. Many professional presentations delivered, and documents are under preparation.

iii Summary of Progress: April-December 2006

Project Management and Organization (2004-2006)

Project Coordination Group:

V Balaji, Head of Knowledge Management and Sharing, ICRISAT (overall responsibility for reports to ICRISAT and the CIO) Rex L Navarro, Director for Communication, ICRISAT Michael Blummel, Team Leader of ILRI-South Asia Programs Celio Mattia, Associate Expert - Water Management and Policies, IWMI, South Asia

Project Managers:

Sreenath Dixit, South Asia (on deputation from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research- completed his term in November 2006) Marie-Julie Menard, West and Central Africa (left in February 06)

Content Advisor:

B Diwakar, ICRISAT

Research Associates:

Cecilia Abraham, IWMI-SA (up to July 2006) D Thirunavukkarasu, ILRI-SA (Upto December 2005; borne on ILRI Toolbox Project)

Graduate Students:

G Dileep Kumar, ICRISAT (doctoral student) Pritpal Kaur, ICRISAT (pre-doctoral intern) Shelly Patwar, ICRISAT (pre-doctoral intern)

Special Partners:

• Desert Margins Program, ICRISAT Sahelian Center (NRM linkages) • Project on Extension Toolbox, ILRI, Nairobi. • Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada (Advice on Repository Design) • Center for Studies in Resources Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Learning Resources Developed on VASAT Project (as of December 2006)

[Available at www.vasat.org; those marked (* ) uploaded to the CGI AR Learning Resources Silo of CG-OLR Project]

1. Coping with Drought* 2. Groundnut Production Practices* 3. Groundnut Insect Pests* 4. Groundnut Diseases* 5. Sorghum Production Practices* 6. Sorghum Insect Pests* 7. Sorghum Diseases* 8. Pearl Millet Production Practices* 9. Pearl Millet Diseases* 10. Pigeonpea Course* 11. Chickpea Course* 12. Crop-Weather Relationships*# 13. FAQs on Organic Manures and Fertilizers* 14. Micronutrients* 15. Vermicomposting* 16. Soil and Soil Health*#

#Translated into Hindi by Microsoft-India Corporation.

Summary of Progress: April-December 2006

Introduction:

The VASAT project received significant institutional recognition in 2006 when it was approved by ICRISAT Board and Management as an institutional project in the Blue Skies research category and as a method of generating new international public goods. VASAT approach of keeping the ultimate user as the chief attractor of all internal knowledge flows was accepted as the framework for designing both administrative and research informatics within ICRISAT. The emphasis on creating information in a granular form with due consideration for re-use for pedagogy and for information sharing is now a more widely accepted practice, and this approach is also ingrained in another inter-center project, the GOFAU, with ICRISAT leading the working group on re-useable Learning Objects (RLO’s).

Trials on Rapid Production of Learning Materials:

Rapid production of locally useful information material, for example, on pest or disease management in a particular crop, is an essential requirement in rural extension processes. Online generators of fact sheets are often used to support creation of local content. During the reporting period, VASAT scholars tried out a range of new tools available online for this purpose. The online Re-load (www.reload.co.uk) editor, linked to a learning management system, was tried extensively and a process was stabilized. This process allows for the creation of re-useable information or learning objects from a course module and will further facilitate suitable recombination of such objects to create a new information module in a relatively short time. This has been demonstrated to NARES partners in two workshops convened specially for this purpose and several members of India Mission 2007 alliance participated in these. They have tried out two modules on ground nut successfully and have rendered these into Tamil language for more frequent use.

A new tool called eXe (www.exelearning.org) was made available through the Commonwealth of Learning whose associate experts from Canada and New Zealand visited the VASAT actors and demonstrated the tool. It is available as an open source application and the current version has been taken up for conducting the trials since late 2006. By now, VASAT actors have acquired proficiency in VASAT Report: April –December 2006 extensive use of online tools and different learning management systems (LMS) platforms to combine learning objects to generate new information modules for the web or course modules for deployment on a standard LMS for online use.

Testing a New GIS-based Tool for Micro-Level Drought Vulnerability Assessment:

The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (www.iitb.ac.in), has developed a number of ICT-based tools for the assessment of threats from floods, landslides and drought. In collaboration with the principal development group at the IIT, Bombay, we carried out detailed surveys of surface water availability and use in select villages in Addakal cluster, with the help of the managers of the Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya (AMS), the all-women micro-credit federation that partners in hosting the rural ICT-mediated information hub.

Details of the methods for the use of satellite imagery to assess the severity of degradation of water resources are provided in the VASAT web site (www.vasat.org/research/gis.htm). Color coded maps of 12 villages of the cluster were developed for different rainfall scenarios in the monsoon season, ranging from 200 mm to 900 mm. Villages identified in yellow or red colors were expected to face water shortages to varying severity.

The AMS volunteers were trained by the IIT group in managing a rain gauge, while VASAT associates trained them in using a Wiki page to upload rainfall information at 0830 hours daily. Data was gathered and uploaded daily from 24th June 2006 till the 31st October 2006.

ICRISAT’s agro-meteorology experts in the agro-ecosystems research theme predicted a seasonal rainfall of in the range of 450 - 500 mm for the sub region that included the Addakal cluster. The AMS volunteers identified two villages in their locality as highly vulnerable (drinking water shortages could occur) and took up awareness raising sessions with the families in those two villages about the need to plan water conservation practices. The seasonal rainfall reported from the district was 521 mm while the rain gauge measurements reported from Addakal gave a figure of 477 mm.

2 VASAT Report: April –December 2006

This intervention was viewed as a success by the AMS managers and will continue in the next season. In the meanwhile, the technique is getting more refined for deployment and testing with VASAT partners in four more regions of India.

Impact Assessment Process:

During June-August 2006, an external expert was commissioned to carry out an independent assessment of the VASAT rural activities to assess the overall impact and the sustainability of the intervention. The invited expert met all the participating experts from the CGIAR centers, and visited and stayed in the Addakal rural block for a week, and further continued the conversation with the volunteers of the Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya and with junior associates on VASAT project. All the reports and learning resources were made available. The expert further spoke to ICRISAT experts in NRM, crop improvement and communication. The expert’s report is attached as Annex 1 to this document.

This evaluation has revealed the following:

--the project is contextualized well; it has internalized the roles of credible rural intermediaries, and women from poor rural households as change agents

--the avoidance of duplication of connectivity infrastructure is a well-thought measure and gaining satellite-based video conferencing through national partners is a major advancement

--content management is innovative and is suited to the milieu where nearly all the users and learners are extremely poor; use of multiple modes of information delivery is assessed as a success

--the processes of open learning developed on this project can contribute significantly to the practice of “ODL for informal groups” which has emerged as a significant sector of rural development

--project is not based on “romantic” views of rural development, and accepts conflicts and their resolution as an integral part of human development.

3 VASAT Report: April –December 2006

--the efforts at sourcing content from experts of NARES have not been adequate while active and intensive participation of NARES experts in content development and management is required for the sustenance of this project.

--more rigorous “projectisation” of activities is a must; currently, the activities are highly demand-driven but a focus in terms of overall development is necessary

--the local opportunities and offer of support to develop more “telecenters” should be availed and the AMS partners should be supported in obtaining the local facilities; the links with the commercial banks should be strengthened to sustain this model for improving extension.

The Center Commissioned External Review (CCER) of the Knowledge Management and Sharing program of ICRISAT conducted a detailed study and assessment of VASAT activities in November 2006. The panel comprised Simeon Ehui (Chief Economist, World Bank, West Africa), Jere Behrman (University of Pennsylvania) and Anne Whyte (International Development Consultant and former DG for NRM at IDRC). The evaluation process involved the study of documents, field visits and direct meetings with partners. Extracts from the panel’s report are given below:

“The broadening of the scope of VASAT in ICRISAT’s planning documents reflects the realization that while VASAT began as a content-driven project to provide information to farmers on drought response through Village Information Centers equipped with Internet connections (and later video-conferencing facilities), it has a far wider potential as a means of transforming the nature of agricultural advisory services1.

“The early history of the VASAT project also underscores that sometimes serendipity in research outscores the best-laid scientific planning. Initially ICRISAT did not have a well defined strategy for interacting with the communities in Adakkal through the ICT platform in the Village Information Center (VIC). Visitors came to the Center for microfinance and became interested in getting

1 VASAT is described in the MTP 2004-06 as a cross regional sub-project to promote validated methods of rain-fed farming techniques among farmers. In the MTP 2006-08, VASAT is described as an up-scaling consortium for knowledge sharing and for capacity building on a large scale. In the MTP for 2007-09 it is positioned as a research project in capacity building and knowledge sharing for a range of end users including rural communities and farmers.

4 VASAT Report: April –December 2006 information via the ICT facilities they saw there. Staff at the VIC began to act as knowledge brokers between the villagers and ICRISAT by posing their questions and receiving and transmitting the expert answers from ICRISAT scientists. ICRISAT also provided training to the women operating the VICs on drought management and how to ask questions of experts to get the answers (that is, how to search expert systems).

“By 2005, 15-20 such questions were being posed to ICRISAT scientists per week through each of the three VICs involved in the project. It was clear that the linkages to ICRISAT for expert advice were much greater than those from the government agricultural extension services. Another change observed was in the interactions between farmers and the commercial providers of agricultural inputs – an important source of (biased) advice to farmers on agricultural practices. Instead of passively listening to the traders, farmers began using their new-found knowledge to vigorously debate with them.2

“Thus the global potential of VASAT began to be understood. Providing expert information to poor rural people directly via ICT in Village Information Centers could not only empower them to be more discriminating consumers of information but it could improve the expert information being provided to them in two important ways. First the information is made more relevant by being better targeted to the needs of the end users (by having to respond to well articulated specific questions). Second, the expert information can itself be improved by integrating local tacit knowledge with formal knowledge through interaction between farmers and scientists via the ICT platform. I t was also shown that village information centre/ telecentre operators can be trained to be effective knowledge brokers acting as intermediaries between local people and information providers”.

Is there a new model of extension emerging?

Public sector extension in the developing countries is in a phase of decline over a decade. The demands of the small and marginal farmers for crop or livestock advisory is now met mostly by other farmers and to a smaller extent, by input suppliers where they are a significant presence. In India, the total number of

2 These findings come from an evaluation conducted by Balasubramanian, K., 2006, Adakkal Initiatives as a project under VASAT Programme; internal report, ICRISAT

5 VASAT Report: April –December 2006 extension workers is estimated to be about 110,000 which is inadequate to meet the emerging as well as current demands. The small number of relatively well-to- do farmers are often believed to take advantage of the presence of this small number of extension workers while bulk of the farm households are not known to approach the extension workers. A study by the Indian National Sample Survey Organization reported that less than 6 per cent of the farmers can be thought to use the extension system in the public sector (NSSO, 2005-available to registered users at http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_nsso_rept_pubn.htm ). In such a context, are we in a position to say that a new model is emerging from VASAT’s work? The answer is yes. We have been able to demonstrate a practice on the ground, and a new approach to building links from research and education to extension is emerging from the project.

VASAT activities have led to situation where new and credible women intermediaries have emerged in the selected villages, and have acquired the reputation for their steadfastness in approaching the sources of information and advice. The existence of ICT mediation has played a significant role in their emergence. A survey by the VASAT extension specialist found that the proportion of small farmers approaching the village information worker of the AMS was sizeable (about two-thirds were poor or marginal farmers). The inputs suppliers and allied traders in the locality have tended to provide advisory but the possibility of availing neutral, unbiased expert advice on plant protection has come as a relief to the small and marginal farmers. For the first time, their deep concerns about the sudden emergence of wild boar as a serious pest reached senior experts who were then able to speak to the District Authorities for intervention. The wild boar infestation had caused major changes in the local cropping patterns, and was a threat to many women farmers. Thus, with enhanced capacity, the local intermediaries were able to help small and marginal farmers raise issues with experts in ways that were unprecedented. These are captured in the report found as Annex 2 to this document.

What limits the scope of such a service is the lack of links among the NARES organizations to support continued mediation using ICT. The links between the AMS and the local extension agency are direct and not ICT-mediated. This is because the AMS has a far more advanced ICT set up and capacity now than what the local extension agency is equipped with. Secondly, the extension agents are far too small in number to cater to the needs of almost 5000 farm families.

6 VASAT Report: April –December 2006

The agents have not had much exposure to recent advances in production technologies and are often found wanting in their knowledge base.

The project activities have enabled the AMS volunteers to raise the essential awareness on agronomy-related issues, and on drought as a wide-area disaster. The enhanced capacity among the volunteers has enabled almost 500 farm families to improve their access to agro-advisory on pests and diseases. The AMS management considered this an important outcome of the partnership, and has made delivery of agro-advisories through capacity development of young intermediaries a key component of their plan to increase the area coverage of the project in the immediate future (Annex 3- AMS poster at the CSO-CGIAR Forum during the AGM 2006). The impact evaluation report points out that an alliance of local NARES agencies is necessary to support and sustain this aspiration even in the near term.

Over the duration of the project, the participating CGIAR centers have produced content in a social manner, through forming alliances with leading national partners. Members in this informal community have jointly written content, have reviewed or analysed various versions prior to making it available in the public domain. The outcome from our engagement with the AMS shows that the networked production of useful information needs to move on to a different plane, where the NARES partners can organize novel capacity strengthening and information and instruction delivery services, based on the content produced through a social network covering both the CGIAR centers and the NARES partners.

During 2006, two roundtables were organized with several NARES partners in India to consider this possibility across the sub region covering several dry land states. They were organized in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning which with support from ICRISAT, has developed a project for tech-mediation in agricultural learning called the TECHMODE. These consultations led to the idea of an online grid of agricultural knowledge which will enable a wide range of information and education services (Annex 4). The emerging consensus was that such a grid should be set up as a repository of extension as well as education materials, with a content management system based on the Wiki-like technologies, and that the delivery or user engagement processes should be based on the services-oriented architecture that allows for multiple modes of delivery. The grid should be developed jointly by NARES partners and IT resource

7 VASAT Report: April –December 2006 institutions with the participation of CGIAR and the FAO (the latter to support the conversion of AGROVOC into an ontology that underlies content management).

Such a generic platform to link agricultural research and education sector in India to extension was presented to the National Agricultural Innovation Program of India, which is a large project operated with credit from the World Bank. After a series of meetings with the NAIP officials, ICRISAT has been invited to form a consortium on knowledge management with three ICT resource institutions, and four NARES centers and universities to build and implement this platform whose fundamental layout is described in the two diagrams below.

KK Org.Org. inin II ndian ndian NGOs AgricultureAgriculture KVKs DoA

SAUs Q&A; activities log

ICAR Wiki-like Content Management System K-Base Intl. + agencies Ontology

Other NARS Commodity agencies Markets

Weather / Dynamic Imagery/ Meteorology Data Maps

8 VASAT Report: April –December 2006

NovelNovel ContentContent CreationCreation && DeliveryDelivery ServicesServices inin II ndian ndian Agriculture

T.V / Digital Library/ Radio Open Archives Print

Knowledge VKCs Organization Interfaces

Smart interfaces

LMS Special Workflows Call e-Learning centers Fixed / Intra / Extranet mobile Phones ICAR + Partners Stakeholders Users Virtual Organization

Collaboration and Capacity Building processes act as the glue to various components here

Thus, the VASAT pilot in a rural cluster in South Central India has led to the development of a significantly large project that will build new linkages between extension and research and will bring together several NARES partners, CGIAR and ICT institutions. To this extent, the project can be said to have developed a model for extension that is ready for large scale testing. To quote the ICRISAT’s CCER Panel:

“As noted above, the VASAT model has the potential to transform agricultural extension services and beyond. I t could be a pilot project that will lead to a revolution that empowers poor people to become their own knowledge brokers for many different aspects of their lives. I t could help to transform the way governments and institutions like the CGI AR Centers interact with their Partners and end users and improve their own advisory systems by facilitating the integration of local and traditional knowledge into them”.

“The Panel sees VASAT as potentially groundbreaking but it needs a clear research design and implementation strategy together with an independent results/impact assessment study if ICRISAT is going to convince additional donors to invest in it. The Panel encourages ICRISAT to consider a new blue sky program based on VASAT and building on other innovations in TechMODE that KMS is

9 VASAT Report: April –December 2006 involved in – combining technology mediated Open and Distance Education as well as the integration of formal and tacit knowledge through ICT platforms. At the same time, the rapid spread of mobile phones, television and radio in the SAT should not be overlooked. If the new initiative is adopted by other CG Centers, VASAT will probably give way to another label.”

What went well? What are the unanticipated and special achievements?

• The outputs were generated and milestones were reached. Additional time at no-cost was sought to accommodate the external review of this project commissioned by the ICRISAT Board and the Management. • The trials on rapid content generation from generic materials are ongoing even beyond the project period because of enthusiasm among the partners, especially those from the CSO sector. • Significant contribution from the Indian Institute of Technology in setting up a GIS-based drought vulnerability assessment method for use among the rural organizations. The cost was borne by the partner. • Strong interest shown by the NARES partners in generalizing the VASAT experience of socially generating content and in ICT-mediated delivery of advisory in order to develop a comprehensive knowledge sharing platform for many regions in India. • Two VASAT partners were invited to the CSO-CGIAR Forum during AGM06 to share with the global agricultural research community their experiences in working with an inter-center project. • Continuation of rural ICT hub operations is secured with an upcoming grant support by the local government.

What did not work well?

• Replacement for the project manager in West and Central Africa could not be positioned in time; this is because it is a shared international position and an incumbent with strong experience in corporate communications and field experience could not be found within September 06, the formal end of the project period originally envisaged.

10 VASAT Report: April –December 2006

• We underestimated the effort and costs necessary to sustain a content production system that is based on networking between multiple locations, research themes and centers.

What are the implications of successes and challenges for the project?

• Sustaining partners’ interest in the project through organization of highly dependable services is essential. • Partners’ expectations go up rapidly as new capacities are built and our services delivery should be capable of dynamic, on-the-course adjustments. • Being at the cutting edge of innovation and social mobilization is the best way to attract more partners and investors.

Issues in need of greater evaluation:

• More rigorous impact assessment of knowledge-related interventions in the rural milieu requires greater involvement of development communication expertise and ethnography. • Content creation through networking is itself a process that requires serious capacity strengthening measures to be built in.

Both these can be taken up as medium term research issues by the CIO of CGIAR in collaboration with interested centers and investors such as the IDRC or the SDC.

Annexure 1

RURAL ICT UNDER VASAT PROGRAMME

K.Balasubramanian July-August 2006 [email protected]

A Report Submitted to ICRISAT

ANGRAU Acharya N.G.Ranga Agricultural University AMS Adarsh Mahila Samaikhya AO Agricultural Officer AP Andhra Pradesh AWS Adarsha Welfare Society, Mahabubnagar, India CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CMS Content Management System COL Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada DAATTC District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centre CRIDA Central Research Institute for Dry land Agriculture, Hyderabad, India ICRISAT International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, India ICT Information and Communication Technology ICT-KM Information and Communication Technology and Knowledge Management program ILRI International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya IWMI International Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka NARES National Agriculture Research and Extension System NGO Non-Governmental Organization NPV Nuclear Polyhedrosis Viruses

NRM Natural Resource Management ODL Open and Distance Learning PEW Para Extension worker VASAT Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics VIC Village Information Center VNA Village Network Assistant

Executive Summary

This report analyses the initiatives in Addakal under VASAT Programme of ICRISAT. A strong community based organization acting as a knowledge intermediary using ICT has shown the potentials of emerging as a new model in extension. Better targeting of women and small and marginal farmers have added strength to the development perspectives of ICRISAT. A strong information platform in VASAT with appropriate content and learning management system is an important contribution to the community based knowledge management leading to horizontal and vertical transfer of knowledge.

The report argues that Addakal initiatives should be expanded through proper projectization and integration of other stakeholders so that it could emerge as a model for NARES and other CGIAR institutions for delivering effective extension leading to development at least cost.

Introduction

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has been addressing the issues of drought and desertification through research and development activities in the semi-arid tropics (SAT). It has accumulated wealth of knowledge and information in drought mitigation and management. It has been focusing on evolving innovative ways for sharing the knowledge and empowering the poor people of SAT in drought preparedness and help NARES to enhance their extension systems.

The Systems Review of CGIAR during 1998 (CGIAR, 2003) pointed out that “The revolution taking place in information and communications technologies presents a tremendous new opportunity for the CGIAR to bring scientific knowledge and indigenous and local knowledge together to bear on global challenges… The CGIAR must be at the forefront of harnessing these technologies to pursue its mission”. ICRISAT in collaboration with ILRI and IWMI proposed an innovative, ICT based knowledge sharing mechanism called Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) to provide opportunity for globally dispersed community of drought-related experts, extension agencies and people to come together and convert research into field reality.

In particular, ICRISAT laid emphasis on focusing NARES. According to one of its reports, “increased information intensity in agricultural production and distribution and marketing has created new challenges for NARES partners. Non-linear onset of climate change-related phenomena were evident throughout the year 2005, and floods have resulted in major damages in regions which had been in the grip of severe drought for almost half of a decade. The potential spread of new hybrids, even GMOs, and the increases in internationalization of commodity markets have also led to increasing pressure on NARES partners to develop rapid responses which are knowledge-intensive. The preparedness levels in relation to disasters have to be higher at the level of a

3 community, which is an information and knowledge-intensive process. The need for revamping public sector extension has been voiced in many regions, while policy makers have started to emphasize the need to change the character of agricultural education to make it easy for practicing farmers to access instructional delivery systems. The NARES partners (including new ones such as the field-based NGO’s or the minor corporate sector) are looking for a new paradigm in knowledge sharing with an increasingly large number of farmers and other rural inhabitants.

VASAT was developed during 2004 with the following objectives;

1. Build and facilitate a consortium of communities of practice in drought coping and mitigation using the expertise of CG centres. 2. Develop non-formal instructional material and corresponding courseware for drought and mitigation. 3. Pilot a repository of learning objects relevant to the sector and develop a model for their transformation into learning materials. 4. Design and test an ICT- based knowledge and information exchange model that links rural families and their organizations with international/national centres of excellence in combating drought and desertification; and assess the sustainability factors. 5. Assess the impact of knowledge sharing on the capacities of rural families to cope better with drought and study the impact on agricultural extension.

Objective of this Study

ICRISAT initiated a study to identify the process and outcomes of its initiatives under VASAT with specific reference to its activities in the Addakal block in the Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh. ICRISAT wanted to understand the various dimensions of ICT4D in Addakal and based on the learning decided to develop a roadmap for strengthening the role of VASAT in ICT4D.

Hence an external consultant was appointed for conducting a rapid assessment on the ICT initiatives under VASAT in Addakal block . The objectives of the assessments are as follows:

1. To study the usage patterns and user profiles 2. To assess the absorption of new information and knowledge derived through ICT hub in dryland agricultural tropics. 3. To identify the functionality of the hub in supporting extension. 4. To develop a roadmap for the future initiatives.

The study was conducted using the methodologies of Focused Group Discussions with stakeholders, interviews and secondary data analysis

Conceptual Framework for Village Knowledge Centre

Setting up a computer centre in a village does not constitute a knowledge centre. The translation of a rural computer centre into a knowledge centre requires an intensive social process. Sood (2003) defines four types of rural computer centres; They are

Cybercafe, which operate as internet café in rural areas without any direct link to government programmes or programmes of developmental organizations

Monologic Kiosk offer only one kind of service and one kind of transaction pattern to specific group of people

Information Kiosk offer wide varieties of service to different groups within a community including e-governance service

Telecentres are related to the activities of NGOs and other development agencies providing basic communication services and educational services

However Sood had left out an important category. This fifth category is the knowledge centres. Knowledge Centres are centres for facilitating the knowledge management of a community in which community and organizations at local, meso and macro level interact for knowledge management, which would ensure livelihood security in the community. Many non-governmental organizations and international agencies like ICRISAT are focusing on enhancing community’s knowledge management through modern ICT.

The differences between information and knowledge are being spelt out in many books and papers in recent times. Many authors have described the progressive processes from data to information to knowledge to wisdom in terms of purposes and contexts. Data refers to raw materials such as facts and figures that could be collected by an information system. Information refers to analysed data often presented in a form that is specifically designed for a given decision-making task, and transmitted to/received by decision makers. Knowledge refers to subsequent absorption, assimilation, understanding and appreciation of that information (Chapman and Slaymaker, 2002). Pomeroll and Brezillon ( 2001) quoting Newell and Simon (1972) argue that knowledge is information incorporated in an agent’s reasoning and made ready either for active use within a decision process or for action. It is the output of a learning process. Thus the roles of knowledge are to: (1) to transform data into information, (2) derive new information from existing ones, and (3) acquire new knowledge pieces. Wisdom is considered as meta-knowledge, knowledge mobilized to acquire new knowledge and update it. From a philosophical angle wisdom refers to the evaluation of knowledge vis- à-vis the norms, values and morality (Pomeroll and Brezillon, 2001). Knowledge management focuses on definition of the context and validation of the information. It also increases the connections among people (who have knowledge) that would likely not

5 occur without the help of a knowledge management system (Terra and Angeloni, 2002). The process of searching answers for the following questions characterizes the dimensions of knowledge management;

Who created the information? What is the background of the creators of information? Where and when was it created? How long will the information be relevant, valid and accurate? Who validated the information? Who else might be interested or has similar knowledge? Where was it applied or proved to be useful? What other sources of information are closely related? How to test and validate some of the concepts?

In the context of rural community, the presence of traditional knowledge is another important dimension of knowledge management. The social construction of traditional knowledge and the blending of the new knowledge with traditional knowledge are the components of knowledge management. Thus knowledge management necessitates a participatory management in which the rural community plays a crucial role of absorption, validation, critical evaluation, assimilation, understanding and appreciation of information. A paradigm shift in the concept and practices of extension will occur only when the community develops its own framework for knowledge management.

A rural telecentre evolves into a knowledge centre only when modern ICT facilitates transfer of information into knowledge. A telecentres providing market price is an information centre. A telecentre, which enables the rural community to understand the differential mechanisms through which prices are influenced and determined, is a knowledge centre.

Most of the rural ICT projects in India focus on providing information. In agriculture and rural development, the importance of uneven distribution of knowledge in explaining variations in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is being increasingly recognized (Chapman and Slaymaker, 2002). Mere information in the form of flow of messages may not be able to address the problem. Knowledge as the creative result of a flow of messages anchored on the commitment and beliefs of the actors involved in the process and resulting in human action is needed. Environment in which knowledge is built, capacity building and empowerment processes, social mobilization and organization are the important factors which have to be taken into consideration while transforming a telecentre into a knowledge centre. Freire (1973) argued in the case of the pedagogy of oppressed vis-à- vis literacy programmes, the need for dialogues and discourses among learners to understand the world instead of mere understanding of words. Similarly in the process of knowledge management, dialogues and discourses of among the rural community are essential. Modern ICT, if properly defined can help to broaden the canvass for dialogues and discourses among the rural community.

6 According to Marwick ( 2001:815) knowledge management takes place at four levels: Socialization in which exchange of tacit knowledge taking place within a community; Externalization in which a set of tacit knowledge is converted into explicit knowledge; when the explicit knowledge are shared, the process of combination takes place; and finally internalization in which socialization, externalization and combination lead to further set of new tacit knowledge.

Through such a process the community plays a crucial role in converting a generic information and knowledge into locale specific knowledge. Such a system requires both vertical (between macro and meso organization and villager) and horizontal transfer of knowledge( between villager to villager) in which the knowledge creators at the macro and meso level interact with the community and through an interactive learning process both the stakeholders define the roadmap for knowledge management. The ICT enabled VKC enhances the socialization process through broadening the horizontal transfer of knowledge. The creation of databases based on local knowledge and traditional knowledge represents the process of externalization in which the tacit knowledge is converted into explicit knowledge. ICT also facilitates the exchange of explicit knowledge within the communities and between the communities leading to a process of combination. Finally internalization of explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge represents the framework of knowledge management. Thus in a knowledge centre villagers are not mere consumers of information but partners in knowledge management.

The various dimensions of village knowledge centres vis-à-vis knowledge management are

1. Centres of human resource management 2. Centres of Information such as weather, trade, market, transport etc 3. Centres of governance for delivering development with least social and economic transaction cost. 4. Centres blending traditional wisdom with frontier sciences

The community ownership is crucial . The various sections of the community ( vis-à-vis caste, class, gender, age, religion and region) should be involved in the entire process of developing the programmes, content, delivery methodologies, learning processes, and assessment, and in the use of innovative technologies. Such a participatory approach is necessary for ensuring the relevance of contents and technologies within the social context in which the knowledge centre is operating.

The evolution of village knowledge centre is a function of 7 C s. They are Connectivity Content (Static and Dynamic), Context, Cash, Culture, Community and Communication. Ensuring the 7 Cs require the following process:

7 Table 1. The Process In A Project

No PHASE ACTIVITIES 1 Mobilization Socio-cultural activation, Conscientization, understanding among the stakeholders, identifying the agenda between the stakeholders. Understanding the information need and knowledge management process. Understanding the structural differences in the community vis-à-vis caste, class, religion, region, gender and age and understanding the differential information need and knowledge management pattern.

2 Organization Identifying the organization types, helping the communities to build organizations- Planning the programme by the community through their organizations: Linking the organization with the macro, meso and local organizations for horizontal and vertical transfer of knowledge. Facilitating the organizations to define the self-sustainable interventions. Developing the contractual arrangement between various stakeholders

3 Capacity Building For ICT enabled knowledge management system, content creation, consolidation and delivery, centre management vis-à-vis technical and financial, organization management, conflict resolution, issues in livelihood security

4 Technology Establishment of the ICT centre with the required Incubation contractual arrangements and connectivity.

5 Technical Support Support in trouble shooting-linking the community with experts and other programmes, facilitation and supporting conflict-resolution mechanisms

6 System Management Enabling the community to run its centres with its resource and institutionalization of linkages between local, meso and macro level coordinate with various stakeholders

Source: Roling, Neils. (1988)

VASAT Rural Information Hub in Addakal

Addakal is a block and Mandal headquarters in the Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh. The block has a population of 45688 with a sex ratio of 966. Addakal’s economy revolves around the semi-arid agriculture and livestock. Out of 36,541 acres of cultivated land, around 28,600 acres are cultivated under rainfed condition. More than 70% of the farmers are small and marginal farmers. Addakal is in a low rainfall region and its average rainfall was 512 mm during 2003 and 425 mm during 2004. Without any major irrigation system, the agriculture depends on the scanty rainfall. Castor, pulses, groundnut, paddy are the major crops in the block. Cropping intensity is also low. Similar to other SAT regions Addakal also depends on the livestock. Nearly 70,000 sheep, 9000 cattle and 8000 goats are helping the poor people of Addakal to survive the vagaries of harsh climate. However, due to the pressures of social and cultural factors and due to the inability of the local economics to support the poorer sections of the community, migration and in recent times suicides have become the coping mechanisms of the community.

From 2002 onwards ICRISAT got involved in a major development programme in Addakal block, supported by the Andhara Pradesh Rural Livelihood Project (APRLP) of Government of Andhra Pradesh. The development programme focused on building the social capital of the block and ICRISAT intervened in the area of watershed management and agriculture with specific focus on providing good quality seeds and extension services. . During this phase, a major community based organization called Adarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS), a federation of women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in the block became an important stakeholder in the project. AMS was active in the area since the late ‘90s. The APRLP requested ICRISAT to partner with them. Gradually the watershed and livelihood programmes were withdrawn and during 2004. The villagers through AMS requested ICRISAT to continue its support particularly in the form of information and extension services.

The concept of VASAT, which was shaping into a programme became an ideal intervention and ICRISAT felt that through VASAT , ICT4D could play a major role in Addakal block. ICRISAT in consultation with AMS created certain basic ICT infrastructure facilities at AMS such as a PC-based computer network, low-cost satellite access to the internet, printer etc and later with the help of Indian Space Research Organization, video conferencing facilities. A hub and spokes model was planned with AMS being the hub and certain number of villages in the block as spokes.

On the request of villagers, ICRISAT extended the services to three nearest villages (within 5 kms radius). In the initial stage, ICRISAT did not install the computers. AMS moved the available extra computers in the hub center to these 3 villages.

9 ICRISAT decided that building infrastructure should not be the main task but adding value to the information and knowledge flow is more appropriate to its mandate. The Mission 2007 of Government of India which aimed at creating a knowledge centre in every village found that Addakal interventions could be one of the ideal models for Mission 2007 and requested an alliance with ICRISAT.

Source: http://www.vasat.org/pilothub/sa-hub-more.htm

Televisions and radios, local government agencies, agricultural input organizations etc showed strong linkages. Natural resource management based education and research institutions and local banks have weaker linkages. However the strongest linkage was between villager to villager indicating the role of horizontal transfer of knowledge. Input suppliers and other agricultural traders are the other important source of information. Local government departments including agricultural department through programmes like Janmabhoomi also play a role.. Market, climate, employment and wages are some the important information needs of the community. Keeping the structures and functions in view, ICRISAT developed various methods of knowledge management system including Content Management and Learning Management Systems. Each village under AMS has certain number of SHGs and in order to coordinate between the SHGs and federation, AMS has created a cadre of Village Network Assistant (VNA). ICRISAT felt that VNAs in addition to coordinating the micro finance at the village could also play a role in extension and knowledge management. [0]AMS & Villagers requested the VNAs, who are handling the SHGs and account books since from the inception of AMS, to act

10 as kiosk operators. As the ICT based initiatives progressed, these VNAs evolved as knowledge intermediaries. ICRISAT realized that ICT mediated approaches are more effective in rural areas if mediated through trained knowledge intermediaries.

AMS has a paid-coordinator at the headquarters who is now involved in managing the IT in hub. This person is viewed as a Para Extension Worker (PEW) who could help in converting the generic information into locale specific knowledge and act as a bridge between ICRISAT and AMS. The para extension worker and three VNAs were trained by ICRISAT in various types of ICT management. ICRISAT mobilized its expertise and made attempt to reach the villages of Addakal through AMS and the ICT network.

Usage Patterns, User Profile and Absorption Pattern

ICT in AMS

AMS has emerged as a self-sustaining, self-generating grassroot organization. Its saving and credit turn over is around Rs. 10 million per annum. Over 5000 women members from 23 villages are actively involved in saving and credit management. In addition to micro finance, AMS is also involved in income generating activities such as dairy industry, Highway Restaurant, Super Market etc and it is encouraging entrepreneurship among its members. It has been able to build infrastructure facilities using various government programmes.

Initially AMS and ICRISAT did not have well defined strategy for interacting with the community on ICT platform. The visitors to the AMS who come there for the purpose of micro finance were attracted towards the ICT activities. Gradually ICRISAT started evolving structured approach for interaction through PEW and VNA. The establishment of spokes in three villages has helped to strengthen the structured interactions. Initially VASAT platform and emails were used for interaction between ICRISAT and Addakal. Later with the introduction of the video conferencing, the pattern of interaction changed substantially. The three VNAs and the Para Extension Staff regularly collect the queries and issues from the villagers and interact with the experts at ICRISAT using video conferencing facilities. The feedback from ICRISAT is communicated back to the villagers. In addition, ICRISAT also organized structured training programmes using Technology Mediated Open and Distance Learning (TechMODE) approach in subjects such as coping with drought since drought is the most serious problem in the area. The role played by the VNAs and the PEW was recognized by MSSRF-Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity when some of them were selected as National Virtual Academy (NVA) Fellows.

User Profile and Absorption Pattern

Interviews with 13 women who underwent the ICT based training programmes showed that all of them learnt certain new dimensions in drought management. Ms. Punnyamma of Nandipet village said that she learnt that she should focus on low water requirement crops such as sorghum and millet. In the village of Janampetta, J.Vimalamma, the VNA,

11 said that she learnt about crop rotation in the ICT based training programmes and through video conferencing. She talked about the crop rotation in her SHG meetings, which has led to large scale planting of “groundnut after paddy” as a system of crop rotation. According to her over 200 farm families in and around her village took up such crop rotations. However, the introduction of crops such as groundnut in large scale as a part of crop rotation has attracted large number of wild pigs in the village and hence the villagers are looking forward to alternative crops like castor. She pointed out that the feedback from the community through ICT, has encouraged ICRISAT to look for solutions in managing wild pigs in groundnut crop cultivation. Ms. Vimalamma has been able to obtain answer through video conferencing for queries raised by 75 farmers during last 6 months, in her village, which has around 500 households. She said that most of the farmers who approach her for solutions are small and marginal farmers who come from marginalized sections of the society. The medium and large farmers do not approach the spokes or hub as they have access to government extension officers. Thus VASAT was able to have a positive bias towards small and marginal farmers who had little or no access to organized extension services. Spokes particularly served very well to cater to such information demand emanating from the small and marginal farmers. Similar viewpoints were presented by the VNA at Vemula who said that small and marginal farmers from the marginalized sections of the community visit her and seek solutions. The on-farm trial experiments and supply of micronutrients and biopesticides have further added value to the role of ICRISAT and she wanted the establishment of NPV production centre in her village. The centre at Komireddypalli has been attracting small and marginal farmers numbering 30 to 40, who meet once in a week in the centre and discuss various aspects. According to the VNA, she receives 15 to 20 questions per week from the farming community in her village.

An attempt was made to build a profile of the users based on the kiosk register (Table 2).

Table 2: Profile of Visitors to the Centre

Jaanampeta Vemula Vemula July 2005 July 2005 December 2005 Number of Visitors 32 23 13 Number of Male visitors 8 3 10 Number of Female Visitors 24 20 3 Number of Small and 27 10 13 Marginal Farmers Number of Medium and 5 13 0 Large Farmers Predominant crops of the Castor, Pulse, Castor, Pulses, Groundnut, Farmers Sunflower Groundnut, paddy Paddy Queries Relating to Pests and 29 20 13 Diseases Queries Relating to various 3 3 0 issues in agriculture

The profiles show certain interesting patterns. During July 2005, both Jaanampeta and Vemula had large number of female visitors. However during December 2005, the profile changed completely at Vemula, which was visited by more males. Similarly, during July, most of the visitors to Vemula were medium and large farmers whereas the visitors during December were mainly small and marginal farmers. The project staff and VNAs attribute this to the changes in the cropping season. The VNAs in all the three villages said that if the computers are connected through network and dynamic information are continuously available, then more number of villagers would visit the centres regularly.

The three VNAs pass the queries to PEW, and PEW process the query further if required and send it to ICRISAT either on mail or through video conferencing.. The replies are collected and passed on to the villagers. The PEW converts the responses in a multimedia format in local language, Telugu and stores them in the Content Management System developed by ICRISAT. They use the CMS for building a question and answer repository for long term usage .Initially the questions from the villagers were not clear to the experts at ICRISAT which resulted in delays in response. . Hence, ICRISAT trained the VNAs and PEW on agro-advisory in distant mode which focused on “appropriately reframing the questions of the villagers” which would help the experts to quickly respond. According to a paper (Dileep Kumar et al, 2006) a typical question before the training was like this:

I observe flower dropping in my castor field, please advise me

After the training the VNAs and PEW were able to rephrase the question ;

In the 3- month old castor crop in my 4- acres land, I have observed two kinds of flowers, red and green; only the red ones turned into fruit and the green flowers dropped down, please advise me’

The evolution of village level intermediaries has helped to reduce the time lag between the questions from the villages and the answers from the experts. The paper from ICRISAT ( Dileepkumar et al, 2006) points out, through a table the impact of the training the village level intermediaries;

Table No. Analysis of the (questions) data collected during ICT-mediated agro-advisory process

No. of Date of Repeated New Un- Process Date questions answers questions questions answered duration received provided 1st October 8 3 - 0 7th October 6 days 2nd October 6 4 - 0 7th October 6 days 14th October 17 14 3 0 18th October 4 days After training 24th October 2 0 2 0 24th October 8 hours

13 4th November 17 12 5 0 5th November 31 hours 14th November 24 16 8 0 15th November 26 hours Source: http://www.vasat.org/pilothub/sa-hub-more.htm

Within a short span of time, ICRISAT’s initiatives have created continuous learning cycles among villagers particularly among women. The hub and spokes model has also initiated “IT Literacy Training Programme” and in each of the three villages 15 to 45 persons have attended the programme. This programme , according to the VNAs, is attracting students and youths in the villages.

VNAs as Knowledge Intermediaries & Gender Issues

AMS being a women’s organization, focuses on woman as “development agent”. The integration of these development agents in the predominately “male farmer’s” world has resulted in certain interesting premises. When enquired whether male farmers accept their role as knowledge intermediaries the three VNAs of Jaanampeta, Vemula and Komireddypalli said that small and marginal farmers from the “lower” caste groups do not have problems in accepting women as knowledge intermediaries, since women play a major role in decision making in agriculture. On the other hand medium and large farmers belonging to “upper” castes do not respond to women as knowledge intermediaries since gender differentials are strong in these groups in agriculture decision-making. In the village of Komireddypalli, some of the farmers during discussions referred the VNAs and PEWs as agricultural officers and they said that they visit AMS to get agricultural advices.

When the video conferencing was taking place between the President of India and AMS during last year, some of the males protested outside saying that they should have a lead role in the entire process. AMS was able to resist their demand and at the same time obtained apologies for their behavior. The introduction of the ICT in the AMS has helped to keep its accounts and financial transactions transparent. Some of the senior members of the organization have to leave the organization, when the members, through computerizing the accounts, found evidences of mismanagement. The tactical role played by ICRISAT in this context is appreciable. It did not get involved in the conflict resolution directly and at the same time encouraged AMS to find its own solutions.

The huge financial transactions and the control over credit have empowered these women. Their ability to face conflicts and capacity to negotiate in the political platforms has been further strengthened with the introduction of ICT by ICRISAT. The following description of the two VNAs by NVA Fellowship reflects the knowledge intermediary role played by them:

Ms. K. Chandrakala (28), hails from a small village, Kommireddypalli of Mehabubnagar District in Andhra Pradesh. She is an enthusiastic, dynamic and committed social worker involved in many community development activities in and around her village. Her keen

14 interest to serve her village community started in 1995 when after completing her 10th class she donned the mantle to successfully run a local society called “Dhanalaxmi”. After undergoing the required training, she taught illiterate adults of the village to read and write in the local language Telugu, from 1997 to 1999. She was elected as Executive Member of a women’s federation called Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya (AMS) at Mandal level and is currently on its Board. Her persuasive management skills helped to take up responsibilities of managing a popular restaurant run by AMS.

She has been successfully mobilizing women in social welfare programs of A P Government such as “Akshara Kiranam”, “ Akshara Bharathi”, “Indira Kranthi Pathakam” etc. She acquired skills by attending training programs like co-operative “Sangham Dairy” training and “Velugu” community training program. Now she is a resource person committed to organize and train self-help groups. She also actively participated in the “Pulse Polio drops” drive, the largest immunization programme of the Government of India. As a Village Network Assistant (VNA) at KommireddypalliKnowledge Center, she facilitates daily educational training programs for children and basic computer training programme for children, youth and adults of the village. With the knowledge and skills acquired during her training in livestock rearing and dairy development, she provides guidelines to the villagers in improving the milk production, animal healthcare and management, improved compost making from farm waste etc. Being trained in computer skills, she manages an Agro-Advisory system through IT for community development with the help of experts from the International Crops Research Institute For The Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). She is also helping farmers increase the yields of castor, a major crop in the region through field demonstrations on the use of micronutrients. She also provides services like informing local weather forecast, comprehensive information in agricultural practices and market prices using Pilot Information Hub of ICRISAT. Ms. Chandrakala’s tremendous energy, self-confidence and sincere commitment makes her a role model of highly respected in her society.

As a Village Network Assistant (VNA) of Janmpete Village Knowledge Center, J. Vimalamma underwent training at the Virtual Academy of Semi- Arid Tropics (VASAT), ICRISAT, for acquiring online knowledge on improved agricultural and livestock practices, weather forecasting and market prices for crop produce. Her improved skills in operating the new IT system enabled her to facilitate in finding solutions to farmers’ queries on production /storage/marketing issues (livestock/ crop) by getting feedback from experts in ICRISAT. Being a farmer herself, she understands the importance of improved high yielding crop varieties and thus procures and distributes crops like castor and pigeon pea seeds to farmers through the AMS. Additionally, she has been providing services such as daily educational programs for children, basic computer literacy training to youth and adults, especially for women of the surrounding villages and thus helping towards empowerment of rural women and youth.

Institutional Linkages

Under APRLP program, ICRISAT partnered with Adarsha Welfare Society (AWS). The AWS selected the Addakal area, and made Adarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS) as the base for their interventions in that area. After the withdrawal of APRLP , AMS evolved as an independent organization. On the request of AMS, ICRISAT agreed to continue their ICT mediated e-learning interventions in that area. There were changes in the leadership and organization structure during the last two years. However none of them affected the partnership between ICRISAT and AMS.,

The study pointed out that while the AMS has strong linkages with ICRISAT, there were no evidences of such linkages with Agriculture Department, Animal Husbandry Department, Commercial Banks and Agricultural University. According to ICRISAT, and VNAs the district administration and the local level officers of various departments have been regularly invited for various programmes. While one of the field officers claimed that he had never visited the hub at Addakal, the VNAs showed photographs of the officer interacting with VNAs in the hub. Some of the officers felt that if ICRISAT could enter into formal agreement with their departments there would be a sustained interaction between the departments and project.

In the village of Vemula, some of the small and marginal farmers felt that agriculture department still plays a major role in the district’s agriculture. However there is only one officer for the mandal who is assisted by two personnel to cover 7500 farmers in 28,000 acres. Thus, there is one extension agent per 3750 farmers covering 14,000 acres. This ratio is inadequate and even if it is assumed that these persons have less administrative responsibility and more time for extension work, it would be physically impossible to answer problems, facilitate linkages, supply inputs, distribute subsidies, convey information and act as knowledge brokers. They require support from para extension workers and continuous flow of information. At present they do not have access to these resources. The field officers of the Department of Agriculture agree that if their department is appropriately integrated with VASAT, their role as extension agents could be further strengthened.

It has been observed that the input suppliers and traders are the main source of information to farmers all over India. Addakal is no exception to this practice. However, this market influenced information offers little scope for knowledge platform. The VNAs pointed that before the introduction of the ICT in Addakal, the farmers were the silent passive listeners to the information supplied by traders. After the introduction and interaction through ICT, the farmers have started debating with the input traders, the relevance of their information. The debates, dialogues and discourses, which are the important components of community based knowledge management, have been strengthened with the introduction of ICT programme.

Andhra Pradesh has also been experimenting Raitu Mitra Groups(RMG), an SHG movement exclusively for farmers. Though this movement is not as strong as women’s

16 SHGs, in some places RMG are playing active role. In Addakal, though there are more than 150 RMGs, only 30 RMGs are functioning. The members of RMG now and then visit the hub and spokes as individual farmers, but RMG as a group do not have formal linkages with the ICT programme.

The State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) offer scope for continuous information flow and facilitate knowledge management process. There is a scope for linking the Regional Agricultural Research Station at Palem and the District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centre (DAATTC) of Acharya N.G.Ranga Agricultural University ( ANGRAU). DAATTC usually consists of four to five scientists from the field of agronomy, entomology, extension and fisheries. This centre closely interacts with the agricultural department at the district level and facilitates the transfer of technology. It trains the departmental staff and farmers and regularly facilitates the transfer of technology after refining it to suit the local condition. This unique institutional arrangement is considered as a step towards capacity building and continuous learning among the departmental staff. In a year it conducts training covering more than 3000 officials and farmers. ICRISAT should explore the possibility of formally linking DAATTC and Regional Agricultural Research Station, Palem, with Addakal hub. Such a relationship would help to reach the extension officials of the State Government. Similar efforts should be made in the case of animal husbandry also.

The role of commercial banks, financial institutions and private sector in the project needs to be enhanced. Banking sector in India is looking for new strategies to improve the rural credit scenario At present AMS as microfinance institution is interacting with banks and financial institutions. ICRISAT could evolve a model of “learning linked to credit” in which every borrower of agricultural and animal husbandry loans go through ODL process. The learning would be specific to the nature of borrowing. It is generally believed that the performance of rural credit is being hampered by high transaction costs and high non-performing assets (NPA). In recent times, the Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have attained importance in banking sector and the experiences show that SHGs not only offer advantages of scale in terms of transaction costs but also have shown lowering NPA rates.

ICRISAT could consider the commercial banks, financial and insurance institutions as important stakeholders in the project. The pilot project offers scope to test an innovative approach for linking learning and extension with agricultural credit. ICRISAT could test the following hypothesis in consultation with AMS;

If rural agricultural credit is blended with appropriate capacity building the performance of rural credit would be much better vis-à-vis productivity, returns and non-performing assets (NPA) levels.

Capacity building would also enlarge the market for bank credit among small and marginal farmers and among other marginalized section of the rural poor.

17 The modern information and communication technologies though structures such as rural internet kiosks, rural telecentres etc can facilitate the capacity building process in a spatial-temporal context which are financially viable, economically feasible and socially acceptable.

If this hypothesis is proven, the banking institutions stand to gain and help in sustaining the rural knowledge centres.

The involvement of institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology for using village based GIS in disaster mitigation is a positive step in the project. The private sector can contribute substantially in providing information and market linkages.

Realizing the need for such an institutional approach, ICRISAT has taken certain steps to bring various partners into a consortium mode. The experiences of Addakal has enabled ICRISAT to develop a consortium of 10 SAUs and ICAR institutions for “Online Agricultural Knowledge Grid” (AGrid) to support improved food, income and livelihood security for farmers in India. The mission of the AGrid Consortium is to contribute to improvements in the livelihood, income and food security of farmers through provision of new generation knowledge, learning and information services, and to offer enhanced capacity strengthening and continuing education services to course developers, extension personnel, university students and rural learners.

ICRISAT Role in ICT4D

While discussing the Addakal Project with various stakeholders particularly with scientific community, one question which was frequently raised: Should an international research organization like ICRISAT get involved in a grassroot project?

The answer is yes for two reasons:

In a research and development process, it is essential that the target group for whom the research is being conducted should be consulted and the feedback is integrated in the research for improving the knowledge, product or services. Many organizations do not have institutional mechanisms for completing this loop. VASAT and projects like the Addakal Model offer such a platform through which scientists can test the relevance of their activities vis-à-vis the user group. In this context Addakal can be a role model not only for ICRISAT but also for all other CGIAR institutions in addressing the “last mile problem” of lab to land programmes.

ICRISAT’s mandate is to support the NARES and hence updating the knowledge regarding various dimensions of extension is essential. Since many countries are investing less and less resources in extension, NARES is looking for cost effective, socially acceptable, “outcome oriented” extension system, Hence evolution of various extension models, as action research is important to support NARES. ICT enabled extension system is one such model and when an international organizations test such

18 models under various socio-economic condition, they are in a better position to integrate this model in NARES through capacity building and policy advocacy.

When the Addakal initiatives began during 2005, it was started as a small component of the VASAT . While VASAT was conceived in a project mode, Addakal was characterized by series of activities based on the demands of the community. Addakal by itself did not have a project approach. Hence there were no microplans and well-defined outputs and outcomes. Thus, Addakal served more as a field lab for VASAT activities.

Recently, CGIAR in its Desertification, Drought, Poverty and Agriculture; Building Livelihoods, Saving Lands has identified Breaking Technology and Knowledge Barriers: Increasing Impact with an "ICT for Development" Strategy as an important theme. According to this report “the rural telecenter strategy has shown great promise when appropriately implemented (PANTLEG 1999; UNDP 1999), providing a knowledge exchange platform that can benefit the poorest in villages” (CGIAR, 2006:51). It has identified ICT as an important strategy in managing Desertification, Drought, Poverty and Agriculture (DDPA) and has put forward following objective;

Test the rural telecenter concept as a means to overcome barriers of distance and infrastructure to enable vital technology and knowledge exchange among DDPA stakeholders.

This objective offers the scope of having a project approach to Addakal, since only through such an approach the efficacy of telecentre as a tool for technology and knowledge exchange could be tested. Thus Addakal can be treated as an applied research and development project and the results of this project can help to develop a cost effective, “outcome oriented” extension model.

Addakal as a Knowledge Centre

Dialogues and discourses at vertical and horizontal levels are the important components of knowledge management at a community level. There are evidences that the ICT initiatives at Addakal have enlarged the canvass for dialogues and discourses particularly at the vertical level. The interaction between the scientific community and the village community has been strengthened. During these interactions the villagers are able to debate about the scopes and problems of new interventions.. Participatory research through on-farm trials has enabled the village community to play a major role in knowledge management. The feedback from the village community has helped ICRISAT to further strengthen its research. During a discussion with Dr. Willam Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, the women members of AMS desired that the ICRISAT supply its good quality seeds so that the Samaikhya can arrange for their multiplication and distribution through its self help groups. They also shared with him how the wild bore menace has forced the farmers of this region to restrict their farming only to castor, as other crops such as maize, sorghum and groundnut are prone to wild bore damage. The Director General assured that ICRISAT would focus on developing solutions for managing such problems. Such dialogues and discourses at the vertical level are adding new dimensions to the knowledge management in the community.

However, there is a need to strengthen the interaction at the horizontal level. ICRISAT (2006) points out that the peoples living in desertification-prone areas hold local technology and knowledge (TK) resources that are critical in the search for solutions. Traditional TK interacting with contemporary TK can help partners think ‘outside the box’ to come up with new practices that are appropriate to their conditions. But finding practical means for engaging such intensive, ongoing dialogue across time, distance, and cultural gaps remains a challenge. ICT based initiatives can help in building ongoing dialogue across time, distance and cultural gaps. Such a process requires a stronger interaction between the community in knowledge management and consolidation of traditional knowledge.

The ICRISAT’s study ( Fig 1) show that the strongest linkages are between farmer to farmer. ICT would be able enhance the canvass of this linkages. At present, there are only three centres which have ICT facilities ( with limited networking facilities) and hence the scope for horizontal transfer of knowledge is limited. There is a need to expand to the other major villages in the mandal. The social, economic and financial sustainability of the hub could be made possible only if large number of villagers interact with the hub through their respective telecentres. Such an expansion would provide scale advantage to the initiatives. It would also lead to socialization, externalization, combination and internalization which are the characteristics of community based knowledge management. The expansion and the establishment of village level telecentres could be made through utilizing the resources provided by the ongoing programmes of state and central government.

SCOT Analysis of the Addakal Project

The evolution of village knowledge centre is a function of 7 C s. They are Connectivity Content (Static and Dynamic), Context, Cash, Culture, Community and Communication. The SCOT analysis is based on these Cs.

Strength:

1. The project has been placed in the context of well-mobilized active utilizer constituency. Mobilized Community is one of the 7Cs required for any development project. Through AMS the project has the potentials to reach at least 5000 households. Instead of creating new institutional structure, ICRISAT has made attempts to add value to the existing institutional structures such as AMS. 2. The project has been based on activities such as understanding the community’s needs, on the basis of which contents are being developed. 3. Another C is the cash. AMS with round Rs. 10 million turn over and each village with 5 or 6 SHGs with saving and credit to the tune of Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 1 million per annum have the potentials to absorb the investments of Rs. 200,000 for establishing the centre.

20 4. Content Management is one of the strong points of the project. The Learning Management System, and Content Management Systems have been simplified which would enable the rural community to get involved in their own content management. The translation of hardcore research into user friendly content through the VNAs and PEW is one of the highlights of the project. Involvement of institutions like IIT, Mumbai for user-friendly GIS information have further strengthened the innovative approach in content management. 5. The core strength in this project is the village level intermediaries for effective implementation of ICT mediated distant agro advisory 6. Context has been well perceived. The semi-arid tropics, poor and marginalized communities and women as change agent etc have been appropriately contextualised. 7. Connectivity issues have been well studied and the involvement of ISRO in developing the video conferencing facilities is the hallmark of this project. 8. The multimedia approach, participatory perspective, video conferencing, local level content generations etc have ensured that the cultural traits of the region are well integrated in the project. The approach of ICRISAT offers scope in defining a methodology for “The Open and Distance Learning for informal groups”, a concept which has emerged in recent times. 9. The “Hub and spokes” model has the potential of enhancing vertical and horizontal communication system. 10. The project has shown the potentials of generating socially relevant “outcomes” and long-term impact. 11. The project does not have a romantic approach and conflicts are seen as a part of development. Such an approach will help to develop realistic assumption while defining a model.

Challenges

1. The Addakal activities are a part a major project of VASAT. Addakal project is actually a series of activities, which have evolved based on demand over a period of time. However, in order to evolve a model, a “project” focus with specific micro plans is essential, through which the inputs, outputs and outcomes can be measured and delivering development at least cost i.e. the social and economic transaction cost of effective extension can be proved. At present Addakal is not a development project per se. The challenges could be overcome and self- replication process could be strengthened if it is evolved as specific sub-project with focus on microlevel plans. The CGIARs recent decision to “test telecentres” for technology and knowledge exchange offers scope to enlarge Addakal initiative as a project. 2. At the beginning of the activities ICRISAT found out that the linkages between research institutions, commercial banks and Addakal have been weak. At present institutions such as CRIDA and Director of Oil Seeds are involved. Strategic efforts have to be made to strengthen the linkages with various other stakeholders including Department of Agriculture, ANGRAU etc. There is a need to

21 understand the roles of various types of stakeholders and develop strategies for their effective involvement. 3. Linking credit with knowledge acquisition is an important strategy. This aspect needs to be reinforced in the project. While AMS as a micro credit institution has strong linkages with banks and financial institutions, “credit-specific” learning would add strength to VASAT and to the telecentre. 4. ICRISAT as a model builder needs to strengthen the role of local institutions in managing development initiatives and plan for the withdrawal even while entering initially entering the village. Studies show that the villagers require holistic approach in extension integrating agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, fishery, forestry, water management marketing, credit etc. ICISAT may have limitations in such integration and hence it requires multi-disciplinary set-up to respond to the needs of the villagers. Even though it has collaborations with IWMI, ILRI etc, evolving such a system within ICRISAT may not be cost effective. In this context the involvement of NARES is crucial. In the Addakal model except for the role of ICRISAT, the NARES and local agriculture department have not played a major role. Thus there is a need for institutionalizing knowledge and information organization for extension. The involvement of Agricultural Research Station of ANGRAU at Palem and DAATTC would help in the sustainability of the project. 5. The project has to integrate ICT4D related inputs of the district administration such as the subsidy for setting up kiosks. Though it may be difficult to institutionalize such a process, a “continuous local level policy advocacy strategy” has to be in place. 6. Though the focus of the project is in terms innovative content management system, there is a need to visualize issues such as scale advantage and threshold level of operation for defining the self-replication process of the innovation and interventions.

Opportunities

1. Government of India (with Mission 2007) and Government of Andhra Pradesh have proactive approach towards ICT4D. 2. National E-governance Plan and Community Service Centre of Department of Information Technology of Government of India can add value to the project. 3. Commercial banks and private sector are also looking forward to opportunities play a role in ICT4D as a “win-win situation” model. 4. CGIAR has identified ICT and telecentres as important area for managing desertification, drought, poverty and agriculture.

Threats

1. Extremism in various parts of the region. 2. The farmers’ suicides in the district, which is one of the highest. 3. Other Socio-Political conditions such as caste-conflicts.

Road Map to the Next Phase

The experiences show that VASAT based ICT4D is capable of creating cost effective outcome and impact in the agriculture sector of the rural economy. However, such process is possible only if the project is appropriately conceived with interventions to minimize the challenges and optimize the strengths and opportunities. Hence, ICRISAT should thrive to develop the “Addakal Model” through an appropriate project approach and offer it as a model for self-replication to the NARES. For this purpose, it should identify a threshold level of operation, which would give a scale advantage in terms of transaction costs. Addakal block has 23 villages and the spokes should be expanded to more number of villages with connectivity to hub. Similarly, the hub should be strengthened to meet the demand of spokes.

Stakeholders and Institutionalization

The project should have clear strategy for bringing NARES as partner in the project. The local agriculture department and the research station of the SAU should be integrated with proper capacity building, definition of roles and responsibilities. Thus, after the project period of three to five years, ICRISAT’s role will change; from an active implementer to demand-based trouble-shooter (ref. Table 1) and the local institutions would play a role in sustaining the initiatives. .

The project should also involve commercial banks and private sector in the project. Innovative approach of linking credit with learning could be tested. For instance, computer based credit applications (off-line or on-line) could be blended with learning from VASAT. Thus when a farmer fills a credit application he/she also learns relevant new knowledge in the sector for which credit is being applied. Similarly agreement could be worked out with AMS and commercial banks whereby every borrower has to go through certain amount of learning. The participation certificate in learning could add value to the subsequent credit applications. The blending of credit with learning would enhance credit performance and banking sector may be interested in investing ICT based capacity building if it offers win-win situation from a business perspective

Infrastructure and Resource Mobilization

An international institution like ICRISAT may not be in a position to use its own resources and invest directly in building grassroot infrastructure. However without the infrastructure, a field based model cannot be evolved. Hence ICRISAT should mobilize various resources at national and international level for building the infrastructure required for the project. Government of India and the State Government of Andhra Pradesh have mobilized various resources for ICT4D. These resources should be utilized

23 while implementing the project. For instance Department of Rural Development offers subsidies for rural kiosks and these resources should be consolidated in the project. Similarly NABARD, which is the implementing agency for Mission 2007, has some resources, which could be used in the project.

Fig 3: The Process of the Project at the Village Level

Technology Community Feasibility Analysis Stakeholders Dynamics and Institutional and Information Analysis Need Analysis Is the programme Awareness Creation… needed?

Developing a perspective Mobilizing & Plan-including Organizing Identifying The the partners Community

Given the opportunities and cost Is there a scope for self-sustaining Self-replicating process Reformulate……

Is the Plan OK for Reformulate…… Stakeholders

Structure Process System of Communication - Content System Knowledge Management Horizontal Management Vertical

Delivery

Review, Monitor Evaluate By Stakeholders Reformulate…… Fulfilling different needs

Specific Points

1. The Addakal project shows that a small group of women belonging the marginal farming and agricultural labourer families, with limited or no education, are able to make use of the new intervention in their livelihood strategy. The concept of village level “trusted intermediaries” for converting generic information into locale-specific knowledge is an important contribution for strengthening the extension systems. NARES is yet to realize the full potentials of ICT as an extension tool and village level intermediaries. Hence, in VASAT project as well as in initiatives such as Addakal, a strong policy advocacy strategy should be inbuilt so that the project and the initiatives act as role model for NARES. 2. The expansion of the activities in a project mode, to larger number of villages to derive scale advantage and facilitate horizontal transfer of knowledge, the involvement of the local administration and departments and utilization of local resources should be the focus during the next stage. 3. One of the major problems in NARES is the information in “spatial-temporal context”. The system takes a long time to respond to the queries of rural poor and many times the information becomes invalid by the time it reaches the user group. Addakal initiatives show that ICT can be one of the tools in helping in providing “Just in time” information by reducing the time lag between farmers questions and experts responses using various aspects of modern ICT. 4. The project should focus on strengthening the role of other stakeholders such as banks ( through credit based learning) input suppliers, DAATTC and Agricultural Research Station of ANGRAU. 5. The project has evolved a framework for Open and Distance Learning (ODL) for informal groups. The content management systems and initiatives such as reusable learning objects can help the SAUs to reach large number of people. ICRISAT has already taken initiatives to bring some of the SAUs together for developing content management systems through AGrid.. 6. Various CGIAR institutions are also looking for extension models. VASAT programme and Addakal initiatives have the potentials to act as role models for other CGIAR institutions.

26 References

Chapman, Robert and Tom Slaymaker (2002). ICTs and Rural Development: Review of the Literature, Current Interventions and Opportunities for Action ODI Working Paper 192

CGIAR (2003). www.cgiar.org/pdf/soibpfinalannexesmarch2003.pdf

CGIAR (2006), Desertification, Drought, Poverty and Agriculture: Building Livelihoods, Saving Lands. A Pre-Proposal for a CGIAR Challenge Programme.

Dileepkumar. G , Sreenath Dixit and V. Balaji (2006). Agricultural Extension with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Mediated Open Distance Learning (ODL) Methods: A Case Study from Rural South India,. http://www.cirn2005.org

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin

ICRISAT (2006) ICRISAT’s Vision and Strategy to 2015 www.icrisat.org/Vision/p2_chapter6.html

Marwick, A.D. (2001). Knowledge Management Technology in IBM Systems Journal, Vol 40, No. 4

MSSRF (2006). Jamsetji TATA National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA) Fellows inducted in January 2006

Newell A. & Simon H. (1972). Human Problem Solving, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliff

Pomerol, J.Ch., P.Brézillon (2001). About some relationships between Knowledge and Context http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~brezil/Pages2/Publications/CXT01/JCP-PB.pdf

Roling, Neils (1988): Extension Science, Information System in Agricultural Development. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

Sood, Aditya Dev ( 2003). Information Nodes in the Rural Landscapes, May-June www.i4donline.net

Terra, J.C., Terezinha Angeloni, (2002). Understanding the difference between Information Management and Knowledge Management www.kmadvantage.com/docs/km_articles/Understanding_the_Difference_Between_IM_ and_KM.pdf

Whyte, Anne (2003). Understanding the Role of Community Telecentres I Development- A Proposed Approach to Evaluation http://www.idrc.ca/telecentre/evaluation/html/30a_Und.html

Schedule of Activities

Date Meetings With 16th June 2006 Dr.V.Balaji, ICRISAT Dr. Michael Blummel ILRI Mr. Dileep Kumar, ICRISAT Dr. Sreenath Dixit, ICRISAT Ms. Sushma Reddy, Addakal mandal

17th June 2006 Committee Members and PEW of AMS, Addakal VNA and villagers at Vemula VNA and villagers at Komireddypalli VNA and Villagers at Janampetta Mr. Moses, Assistant Agricultural Officer, Addakal Mr. Dileep Kumar ICRISAT

18th June 2006 Dr. V. Balaji, ICRISAT 19th June 2006 Mr. Celio Mattia, IWMI Michael Blummel ILRI Ms. Enrica Procari, ICT-KM Dr. M.L. Chadha, AVRDC

Mr. Dileep Kumar, ICRISAT Dr. V. Balaji, ICRISAT Dr. Sreenath Dixit, ICRISAT

20th June 2006 Discussions with Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA) 21st June 2006 Teleconferencing with National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) and Indian Institute of Information Technology, (IIIT), Hyderabad 2nd and 23rd Report Writing June 2006

28 Annexure 2

Agricultural Extension in I ndia I n Search of a New Communication Paradigm Sreenath Dixit and V Balaji

1 I ntroduction

The word ‘extension originated at the turn of the century in the United States from its Land Grant Universities' practice of 'reaching out' to farmers with new technologies. Much investment for agricultural research and extension in developing countries has been supported by international agencies. For instance, the World Bank alone committed over US$1000 million during the 1970s to smallholder projects involving research and extension, rising to US$4700 million in the 1980s. In many countries in the 1950s and 1960s, extension was linked to specific capital investments, to ensure that farmers had sufficient access to inputs and technical information to make optimal use of e.g. irrigation infrastructure. Support for extension was broadened via integrated rural development projects, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), in the 1970s. The lack of relevant technology in many areas then led to efforts to strengthen extension- research linkages, initially in South Asia in the 1980s and subsequently in SSA (World Bank 1994).

Some of the conventional functions of extension as detailed by Farrington (1994) are:

diagnosis of farmers' socio-economic and agro-ecological conditions and of their opportunities and constraints.

message transfer through direct contact between extension agent and farmer or indirect contact involving intermediaries such as

1 'contact farmers' or voluntary organizations; through training courses and through mass media. Messages may comprise advice, awareness creation, skill development and education.

feedback to researchers on farmers' reactions to new technology to refine future research agenda.

development of linkages with researchers, government planners, NGOs, farmers' organizations, banks, and the private commercial sector.

monitoring of the extension system, and evaluation of its performance at farm level.

Donors perceived national extension services as fragmented, poorly trained, responsible to more than one authority, having little contact with research services and tending to work more with wealthier than with low-income farmers. In some cases, they were made to undertake duties such as tax collection, which are anathema to good working relations with farmers. Remedial efforts - strongly influencing other donors - were undertaken by the World Bank in the form of the 'Training and Visit (T&V)' system. T&V had its origins in Israel in the 1950s, was subsequently tried in a World Bank project in Turkey in the late 1960s, and then introduced to South Asia in the late 1970s, initially where there was thought to be a large backlog of appropriate technology 'on the shelf'. T&V is characterized by: a single line of command; a stripping away of services not integral to the provision of advice (but recently allowing extensionists to supply recommended inputs, especially in remote areas); a focus on contact farmers (more recently, groups) intended to pass on information to others; time- scheduled activities; regular training and 'refreshers', and close linkages with research (Farrington, 1994).

1.1 Agricultural Extension: Global Scenario

World Bank, based on compilation of figures received from regional extension associations in January 2006 (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTARD/EXTA GISOU/0,contentMDK:20930620~menuPK:2756949~pagePK:6416844 5~piPK:64168309~theSitePK:2502781,00.html) reports that approximately one million people continue to work in agricultural extension worldwide but the structure and function of national extension systems continue to change. In the past, extension services, largely public, were equated with the transfer of agricultural production technology in predetermined “packages.” Extension systems are now understood to be much broader and more diverse, including public and private sector and civil society institutions that provide a broad range of services (advisory, technology transfer, training, promotional, and information) on a wide variety of subjects (such as agriculture, marketing, social organization, health, and education) that rural people require to better manage their agricultural systems and livelihoods.

Public extension systems in some European countries have been substantially downsized or phased out altogether. In North America and Western Europe, technical support to farmers is largely provided by highly qualified agricultural specialists who work for private firms, especially input supply companies. At the same time, some Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Hungary, still maintain large public agricultural extension systems. Other European and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries are attempting

3 to privatize their extension systems, with mixed results. In general, farmers are unwilling to pay for agricultural extension services on a continuing basis unless these services are integrated with the sale of inputs or with other technical and/or marketing services.

The total number of workers in extension systems in most developing countries appears to be stable, but these systems are also being transformed to become more effective and cost efficient. For example, China continues to have the largest extension system in the world (371,350 extension workers in crop-related extension, and a comparable number in livestock extension), but it has moved rapidly to shift the cost of extension to farmers. It now recovers most of the cost of extension through the sale of inputs and services to farmers at the county and township levels.

India, which has the second largest number of extension workers in the world (110,000), is undergoing a different type of transformation, decentralizing its extension system and making it more “market driven.”

Less information is available about national extension systems in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, but based on current data from selected countries, it appears that the number of extension workers in most countries remains relatively stable. For example, Indonesia continues to have the third largest public extension system, with 30,000 staff members; Iran has 10,372 public extension workers across all subject matter areas; South Africa has 3,034 public extension workers; and Tanzania has 7,290 public extension workers. Mozambique, on the other hand, has a total of

4 1,838 extension staff, including 777 public extension workers, 840 extension agents working for NGOs, and 228 private extension workers. During the coming decade, it is expected that many national extension systems will shift their efforts toward organizing farmers into groups (building social capital) and then helping these groups increase farm income and contribute to increased rural employment by focusing on high-value commodities and products.

1.2 Eroding Public Support: A global trend

In the 1990s, in many developing countries, government funding for the core research and extension institutions that provided services to small farmers and rural communities virtually collapsed. During the 1980s and 1990s structural adjustment programs have created pressure for governments to reduce public expenditures on agricultural and rural development research and extension services. Coinciding with these expenditure reductions many donors and academics have called for a new extension paradigm that focuses on decentralization and includes increased farmer participation and the use of extension contracting or outsourcing.

Decentralized government research and extension services still require financing, particularly financing to build the capacity of regional stakeholders to develop and support functional and sustainable extension services. Decentralization also requires financing for coordination. In the absence of coordination, countries can experience a “patchwork of donor -funded projects” and indigenously developed projects.

5 Agricultural extension in India played a remarkable role in irrigated regions in the 1960s and 70s. There is a major success story for agricultural extension viewed this way: the acreage under new, hybrid wheat varieties in India increased from just under 4 acres in 1964 to 4 million acres by 1970, largely due to the efficiency with which laboratory results were transferred to the farmers’ fields. In specific commodities, agricultural extension continued to be successful- in horticultural crops, in aquaculture, to cite two examples. Agriculture is primarily a state subject, and agricultural extension is even more so. The Union Ministry of Agriculture through the office of the Extension Commissioner of India lays down the policy guidelines and approaches. The Central Government, through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) supports the arrangement of Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK), which cover in principle every district in the country. The State Governments operate their extension programs primarily through the State Directorates of Agriculture while the State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) have their own extension projects as well, more to promote their technologies directly. A number of private companies, particularly those in input production production/supply or those working with specific commodities such as sugarcane or rubber, have their own extension programs as well. In spite of the presence of private actors, extension is primarily viewed as a public service with the government as the right actor.

Though India boasts of having the second largest army of extension professionals, as per Farrington (1994) however some 20% of posts are vacant at any one time, mostly in the more remote areas where it is difficult to keep government staff in post. Most State governments have not filled the vacant positions for quite some time either due to

6 paucity of funds or perceived lack of impact of agricultural extension 1 and emphasis on other sectors of economy . There have been a number of developments in the last two decades that have contributed to weakening of such a perspective of extension. One is the slow reduction in the emphasis on extension in the States, who look upon extension as an activity that is best sustained with external support. The other is the break up of the DOAs in many states into directorates for soil/horticulture/marketing etc. Yet another is the emergence of additional channels of information to the farmer in the form of new media, particularly the television and the reach of the commercial retailing system. The conventional approach, namely transfer of technology from the laboratory to the farmer, is questioned by a number of specialists internationally as well as nationally. Extension has often been criticized for the linear, unidirectional flow of information between research services and farmers. There are, the more recent critics argue, multiple sources of new agricultural inputs, ideas and practice (grouped here under the term 'technology'), which include private commercial and voluntary sectors and farmers' own innovations as well as public sector services. Information flows must therefore be multi-directional, and particular importance attaches to the feedback to researchers on how farmers respond to new technology. Therefore, the need for agricultural extension system to function as a broker or facilitator of information flows among farmers and other stakeholders is now stressed, and the need to deliver a spectrum of information services, rather than just technology transfer, is viewed by many developing country specialists as the right function of extension. This shift in the role of extension calls for continued investment, although it needs to be placed in the new perspective, particularly to address

7 continuing fall in value addition in agriculture, increasing vulnerability of crop production due to water shortages, and the potential rise of a new global agricultural trade regime with a host of uncertainties,

1 The impact of extension on production can rarely be separated out from that of other factors such as research, or changes in the availability (or properties) of inputs. Numerous studies purporting to demonstrate strongly positive returns to extension expenditure have a weak methodological base: the production function analyses on which most rely generally incorporate incomplete sets of causal factors and so generate inflated estimators. A review by the World Bank of its support for T&V over two decades was critical of methodological weaknesses of this kind. None of these can be addressed by the rapidly emerging private sector extension arrangements alone, and a public service with new actors and information arrangements needs to be brought in a short time. The ongoing pilot projects on use of information and communication technologies in rural development and agricultural extension provide an unprecedented opportunity for operationalising a new agricultural extension function. This in turn will contribute significant new strengths to reviving national agricultural extension system.

1.3 Agricultural Extension: Challenges in SAT

Frequent droughts, especially in developing countries of the SAT result in untold economic dislocation, environmental damage, personal sufferings, hunger, and even deaths among large numbers of people. When drought occurs, farm communities are usually the first to be

8 affected because of their heavy dependence on stored soil water. This can be rapidly depleted during extended dry periods. If rainfall deficiencies continue, even people who are not directly engaged in agriculture will also be affected by drought. This underscores the vulnerability of entire societies to this phenomenon.

Drought and desertification are serious problems that significantly affect millions of people and ecosystems in the SAT. The UN Secretary General recently observed that, “drought and desertification threaten the lives of over a billion people in 110 countries”. Occurrence of drought in successive years has led to famines, and South Asia (particularly India and Pakistan) and much of Sub Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNCCD) has emphasized the need to view drought as a key-contributing event in the desertification processes.

Lack of investment in agriculture and poor infrastructure is daunting agricultural extension as a profession. For instance in certain countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has changed the composition of the extension clientele, bringing young orphans, widows, the physically weak, the elderly and ill persons into the fields. It has caused deaths, prolonged illness and absenteeism among extension staff. The epidemic is thus no longer just a health problem - it has become a serious development issue, challenging the validity of present agricultural extension strategies (Qamar 2000?).

The Committee on Science & Technology (CST) of the UNCCD has consistently emphasized the role of information in drought management The CST experts have advocated the establishment of a

9 comprehensive early warning system for drought to make famine early warning even more relevant. The UNSO (now the UNDP Dry lands Development Center, Nairobi), rated drought preparedness higher than relief and insurance, and pointed out that “information is the backbone of drought preparedness” (UNSO, 2000). Canada, in its submission to the CST-5 of UNCCD, referred to the accumulated experience in drought management in the Sahel, emphasized the role of information in enhancing drought management, and pointed out the need for an “experimental communication strategy” that would integrate a bottom-up approach with a knowledge dissemination strategy.

Extension organizations in developing countries, particularly in dry regions face one major problem: the physical distances involved between farmers, and researchers. Lack of transport imposed due to meager resources available with public extension organizations make the matters worse. This often limits the effectiveness of conventional extension and fails to bridge the gap between farmers and the information required for better farming. Fortunately for farmers and extension professionals it is now possible to tackle this issue with the help of new and emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs are providing new opportunities for embracing radical changes and evolving an effective agricultural extension system across most challenging areas.

A survey in Bihar, one of the states in India having predominantly rural and agrarian populations, instituted by Government of India’s National Informatics Centre, shows agriculture related (such as weather, modern methods of cropping and market prices) information

10 as the most critical information sought by rural communities besides information on health, education and government aid (CRISP, 2003). Though India boasts of the maximum number of rural ICT projects (a few of the much noted being Gyandoot, ITC e-Choupal, n-Logue, Drishtee etc.) only few however are able to cater to this need of the rural communities. A common foundation for many of these projects is setting up an entrepreneurial information kiosk/ Telecenter at the village level (Dhavan, 2004). Noted ICT4D expert Prof. Keniston of the MIT after reviewing major ICT4 D initiatives of India observes development of locally relevant content as one of the major challenges facing these projects.

Taking note of such a need and a strong cue from the Systems Review of CGIAR during 1998 (CGIAR, 2003), which pointed out “The revolution taking place in information and communications technologies presents a tremendous new opportunity for the CGIAR to bring scientific knowledge and indigenous and local knowledge together to bear on global challenges… The CGIAR must be at the forefront of harnessing these technologies to pursue its mission”, ICRISAT in collaboration with ILRI and IWMI proposed an innovative, ICT based knowledge sharing mechanism called Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) to provide opportunity for globally dispersed community of drought-related experts, extension agencies and affected rural communities to come together and share timely information. This marked the beginning of one of the most comprehensive and innovative ICT projects that addressed challenges of agricultural extensionists faced in the drought-prone regions of the SAT.

11 2. VASAT: An I nnovative Approach to Agricultural Extension Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) was implemented in 2004 across SA and SSA to cover a few of the most drought-prone areas of the SAT. In this paper we share the learnings of the project besides dealing briefly with the process and analysis the outcomes to suggest an ICT enabled agricultural extension model keeping in mind the contemporary opportunities and challenges.

2.1 Genesis of VASAT A series of consultations with eminent experts in drought management and information scientists lead to the idea of forming a strategic alliance called the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics-VASAT for information, communication and capacity building of communities vulnerable to droughts. It was positioned as a technology-mediated extension and knowledge-sharing program partnering with a wide range of organizations including community organizations in rural areas to supplement the organized inter-institutional learning projects of ICRISAT.

Following such institutionalization, the VASAT idea was offered as a project under the CGIAR’s ICT-KM program through a competitive bid process. After two rounds of review, VASAT was approved as a joint project of ICRISAT, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with ICRISAT as the coordinating agency. The activities were also approved in South Asia (India) and in West Africa (Niger). The project activities commenced in April 2004. The ICT-KM support continued up to September 2006.

12 2.2 Pilot I nformation Hubs

This sections deals about the process of setting up information hubs in India and Niger. However, the process adopted in Niger is described in brief while that in India is discussed in detail for analysis and used as basis for proposing a new paradigm of agricultural extension.

West and Central Africa Rapid rural appraisals were conducted to assess the information needs of the rural communities in Kahe and Gabi in Niger VASAT-WCA). Information hubs were set up at Kahe and Gabi by using rural community radios. Radio staff was trained in community broadcasting techniques, writing for community radio, internet-radio interface and station maintenance at Kahe and Gabi. In partnership with UNDP and DGCD project, two volunteers of each radio station were initiated to computer with a private firm from Niger. Radio staff also received training on management of documentation centre and weather forecast instrumentations on site. One of the main challenges of VASAT in West Africa was to ensure that the radio stations were functional at the technical level. Sand and dust are enemies of radio devices and therefore emphasis was laid on keeping the stations functional with best efforts. Moreover, rural radios in Niger needed great support in terms of technical assistance in order to make them functional. Though the pilot stations received their computers, meeting their energy needs was some times an issue. Solar panels were increased on both sites and batteries were changed, antennas were reoriented in order to reach a greater number of producers.

On site content was developed as well as with the expert groups.

13 Following demand from Kahé village chief a special program was developed and aired on Striga in collaboration with ICRISAT scientists. Radio staff came to Sadoré to realize their interviews with the scientists. Moreover, radio staff in collaboration with ICRISAT technicians developed a program on insects invading millet fields and ways to control in local language. VASAT-WCA facilitated Kahé villagers and radio staff visits to ICRISAT Sahelian Center. This helped the radio staff realize that more data about information needs of the villagers towards sustainable resource management and system diversification be collected for interviews on-air. Radio staff from Kahé also developed a special program to present VASAT and ICRISAT.

Training modules on climate changes were developed in partnership with Agrhymet. Agricultural and natural resource management programs were broadcast in collaboration with Farm Radio (www.farmradio.org) based in Canada. A program has been going on for sustainability of rural radios in Niger with CPRP (Comité de pilotage des radios de proximité). This program is helping to reinforce existing rural radios in Niger and identify key points for success of rural radios. Potential partners in Burkina Faso include CIERRO (Centre interafricain d’études en radios rurales).

A special monitoring of broadcast program was organized between VASAT, UNDP, project intrants, UNICEF and the Decision Support System project lead ICRISAT in order to harmonize the interventions among rural radios in Niger. Different meetings were held with the Core Group validating the document. Broadcasting usually followed the agricultural calendar. Broadcast program in Kahé was continually improved based on listener feedback involving 6 hours a week

14 dedicated to VASAT. ‘Farmers’ Voice’ developed a special edition on ICRISAT and VASAT and the ‘Herders’ Voice’ was lead by interviews with herders in local languages.

Addakal I nformation hub in South Asia Addakal is a block and Mandal headquarters in the Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh. The block has a population of 45688 with a sex ratio of 966. Addakal’s economy revolves around the semi-arid agriculture and livestock. Out of 36,541 acres of cultivated land, around 28,600 acres are cultivated under rainfed condition. More than 70% of the farmers are small and marginal farmers. Addakal is in a low rainfall region and its average rainfall was 512 mm during 2003 and 425 mm during 2004. Without any major irrigation system, the agriculture depends on the scanty rainfall. Castor, pulses, groundnut, paddy are the major crops in the block. Cropping intensity is also low. Similar to other SAT regions Addakal also depends on the livestock. Nearly 70,000 sheep, 9000 cattle and 8000 goats are helping the poor people of Addakal to survive the vagaries of harsh climate. However, due to the pressures of social and cultural factors and due to the inability of the local economics to support the poorer sections of the community, migration and in recent times suicides have become the coping mechanisms of the community.

15 extension services. . During this phase, a major community based organization called Adarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS), a federation of women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in the block became an important stakeholder in the project. AMS was active in the area since the late ‘90s. The APRLP requested ICRISAT to partner with them. Gradually the watershed and livelihood programs were withdrawn and during 2004. The villagers through AMS requested ICRISAT to continue its support particularly in the form of information and extension services.

The concept of VASAT, which was shaping into a program, became an ideal intervention and ICRISAT felt that through VASAT, ICT4D could play a major role in Addakal block. ICRISAT in consultation with AMS created certain basic ICT infrastructure facilities at AMS such as a PC- based computer network, low-cost satellite access to the internet, printer etc and later with the help of Indian Space Research Organization, video conferencing facilities. A hub and spokes model was planned with AMS being the hub and certain number of villages in the block as spokes.

On the request of villagers, ICRISAT extended the services to three nearest villages (within 5 km radius). In the initial stage, ICRISAT did not install the computers. AMS moved the available extra computers in the hub center to these 3 villages.

ICRISAT decided that building infrastructure should not be the main task but adding value to the information and knowledge flow is more appropriate to its mandate. The Mission 2007 of Government of India, which aimed at creating a knowledge centre in every village, found that Addakal interventions could be one of the ideal models for Mission

16 2007 and requested an alliance with ICRISAT.

ICRISAT conducted a preliminary study to find out the information linkages operating in the area of agriculture in Addakal block. This study yielded very interesting results, which showed that macro and meso level knowledge development organizations have limited reach with the village community. Televisions and radios, local government agencies, agricultural input organizations etc showed strong linkages. Natural resource management based education and research institutions and local banks have weaker linkages. However the strongest linkage was between villager to villager indicating the role of horizontal transfer of knowledge. Input suppliers and other agricultural traders are the other important source of information. Local government departments including agricultural department through program like Janmabhoomi (meaning motherland) also play a role. Market, climate, employment and wages are some the important information needs of the community. Keeping the structures and functions in view, ICRISAT developed various methods of knowledge management system including Content Management and Learning Management Systems. Each village under AMS has certain number of SHGs and in order to coordinate between the SHGs and federation, AMS has created a cadre of Village Network Assistant (VNA). ICRISAT felt that VNAs in addition to coordinating the micro finance at the village could also play a role in extension and knowledge management. AMS & Villagers requested the VNAs, who are handling the SHGs and account books since from the inception of AMS, to act as kiosk operators. As the ICT based initiatives progressed, these VNAs evolved as knowledge intermediaries. ICRISAT realized that ICT mediated approaches are

17 more effective in rural areas if mediated through trained knowledge intermediaries.

Usage Patterns, User Profile and Absorption Pattern

I CTs in AMS AMS has emerged as a self-sustaining, self-generating grassroot organization. Its saving and credit turn over is around Rs. 10 million per annum. Over 5000 women members from 23 villages are actively involved in saving and credit management. In addition to micro finance, AMS is also involved in income generating activities such as dairy industry, Highway Restaurant, Super Market etc and it is encouraging entrepreneurship among its members. It has been able to build infrastructure facilities using various government program.

User Profile and Absorption Pattern Interviews with 13 women who underwent the ICT based training programmes showed that all of them learnt certain new dimensions in drought management. Ms. Punnyamma of Nandipet village said that she learnt that she should focus on low water requirement crops such as sorghum and millet. In the village of Janampetta, J.Vimalamma, the VNA, said that she learnt about crop rotation in the ICT based training

19 programmes and through video conferencing. She talked about the crop rotation in her SHG meetings, which has led to large scale planting of “groundnut after paddy” as a system of crop rotation. According to her over 200 farm families in and around her village took up such crop rotations. However, the introduction of crops such as groundnut in large scale as a part of crop rotation has attracted large number of wild pigs in the village and hence the villagers are looking forward to alternative crops like castor. She pointed out that the feedback from the community through ICT has encouraged ICRISAT to look for solutions in managing wild pigs in groundnut crop cultivation. Ms. Vimalamma has been able to obtain answer through video conferencing for queries raised by 75 farmers during last 6 months, in her village, which has around 500 households. She said that most of the farmers who approach her for solutions are small and marginal farmers who come from marginalized sections of the society. The medium and large farmers do not approach the spokes or hub as they have access to government extension officers. Thus VASAT was able to have a positive bias towards small and marginal farmers who had little or no access to organized extension services. Spokes particularly served very well to cater to such information demand emanating from the small and marginal farmers. Similar viewpoints were presented by the VNA at Vemula who said that small and marginal farmers from the marginalized sections of the community visit her and seek solutions. The on-farm trial experiments and supply of micronutrients and biopesticides have further added value to the role of ICRISAT and she wanted the establishment of NPV production centre in her village. The centre at Komireddypalli has been attracting small and marginal farmers numbering 30 to 40, who meet once in a week in the centre and discuss various aspects. According to the VNA, she receives 15 to

20 20 questions per week from the farming community in her village. Analysis data on users based on the kiosk register maintained at spokes lead to the following user profile (Table 2).

Table 2: Profile of Visitors to the Centre Particulars Jaanampeta Vemula Vemula July 2005 July 2005 December 2005 Number of Visitors 32 23 13 Number of Male 8 3 10 visitors Number of Female 24 20 3 Visitors Number of Small and 27 10 13 Marginal Farmers Number of Medium 5 13 0 and Large Farmers Predominant crops Castor, Pulse, Castor, Pulses, Groundnut, of the Farmers Sunflower Groundnut, paddy Paddy Queries Relating to 29 20 13 Pests and Diseases Queries Relating to 3 3 0 various issues in agriculture

21 The three VNAs pass on the queries to PEW, and PEW process the query further if required and send it to ICRISAT either on mail or through video conferencing. The replies are collected and passed on to the villagers. The PEW converts the responses in a multi-media format in local language, Telugu and stores them in the Content Management System developed by ICRISAT. They use the CMS for building a question and answer repository for long-term usage. Initially the questions from the villagers were not clear to the experts at ICRISAT, which resulted in delays in response. . Hence, ICRISAT trained the VNAs and PEW on agro-advisory in distant mode which focused on “appropriately reframing the questions of the villagers” which would help the experts to quickly respond. According to a paper (Dileep Kumar et al, 2006) a typical question before the training was like this:

I observe flower dropping in my castor field, please advise me

After the training the VNAs and PEW were able to rephrase the question ; In the 3- month old castor crop in my 4- acres land, I have observed two kinds of flowers, red and green; only the red ones turned into fruit and the green flowers dropped down, please advise m e’

The evolution of village level intermediaries has helped to reduce the time lag between the questions from the villages and the answers from the experts. The paper from ICRISAT (Dileepkumar et al, 2006) points out, through a table the impact of the training the village level intermediaries;

Table 3. Analysis of the (questions) data collected during ICT-

22 mediated agro-advisory process

No. of Date of Repeated New Un- Process Date questions answers questions questions answered duration received provided st th 1 8 3 - 0 7 6 days October October nd th 2 6 4 - 0 7 6 days October October th th 14 17 14 3 0 18 4 days October October After training th th 24 2 0 2 0 24 8 hours October October th th 4 17 12 5 0 5 31 November November hours th th 14 24 16 8 0 15 26 November November hours

VNAs as Knowledge I ntermediaries & Gender I ssues

23 knowledge intermediaries, since women play a major role in decision making in agriculture. On the other hand medium and large farmers belonging to “upper” castes do not respond to women as knowledge intermediaries since gender differentials are strong in these groups in agriculture decision-making. In the village of Komireddypalli, some of the farmers during discussions referred the VNAs and PEWs as agricultural officers and they said that they visit AMS to get agricultural advices.

24 Ms. K. Chandrakala (28) hails from a small village, Kommireddypalli of Mehabubnagar District in Andhra Pradesh. She is an enthusiastic, dynamic and committed social worker involved in many community development activities in and around her village. Her keen interest to serve her village community started in 1995 when after completing her 10th class she donned the mantle to successfully run a local society called “Dhanalaxmi”. After undergoing the required training, she taught illiterate adults of the village to read and write in the local language Telugu, from 1997 to 1999. She was elected as Executive Member of a women’s federation called Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya (AMS) at Mandal level and is currently on its Board. Her persuasive management skills helped to take up responsibilities of managing a popular restaurant run by AMS.

25 trained in computer skills, she manages an Agro-Advisory system through IT for community development with the help of experts from the International Crops Research Institute For The Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). She is also helping farmers increase the yields of castor, a major crop in the region through field demonstrations on the use of micronutrients. She also provides services like informing local weather forecast, comprehensive information in agricultural practices and market prices using Pilot Information Hub of ICRISAT. Ms. Chandrakala’s tremendous energy, self-confidence and sincere commitment makes her a role model of highly respected in her society.

26 I nstitutional Linkages Under APRLP program, ICRISAT partnered with Adarsha Welfare Society (AWS). The AWS selected the Addakal area, and made Adarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS) as the base for their interventions in that area. After the withdrawal of APRLP, AMS evolved as an independent organization. On the request of AMS, ICRISAT agreed to continue their ICT mediated e-learning interventions in that area. There were changes in the leadership and organization structure during the last two years. However none of them affected the partnership between ICRISAT and AMS.

It has been observed that the input suppliers and traders are the main

27 source of information to farmers all over India. Addakal is no exception to this practice. However, this market influenced information offers little scope for knowledge platform. The VNAs pointed that before the introduction of the ICT in Addakal, the farmers were the silent passive listeners to the information supplied by traders. After the introduction and interaction through ICT, the farmers have started debating with the input traders, the relevance of their information. The debates, dialogues and discourses, which are the important components of community based knowledge management, have been strengthened with the introduction of ICT program.

New Model Realizing the need for such an institutional approach, ICRISAT has taken certain steps to bring various partners into a consortium mode. The experiences of Addakal have enabled ICRISAT to develop a consortium of 10 SAUs and ICAR institutions for “Online Agricultural Knowledge Grid” (AGrid) to support improved food, income and livelihood security for farmers in India. The mission of the AGrid Consortium is to contribute to improvements in the livelihood, income and food security of farmers through provision of new generation knowledge, learning and information services, and to offer enhanced capacity strengthening and continuing education services to course developers, extension personnel, university students and rural learners.

28 References

Centre of E-governance, IIM Ahmedabad, “Evaluation Studies by the Centre for E-Governance, I ndian I nstitute of Management, Ahmedabad (CEG-I I MA)” Information Technology in Developing Countries, Volume 13, No. 1, June 2003. Available online at

CGIAR (2003). www.cgiar.org/pdf/soibpfinalannexesmarch2003.pdf

CRISP Group, National Informatics Centre, Department of IT, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, "I nformation Needs Assessment for Rural Communities- An I ndian Case Study" July 2003. Available online at

Dhavan, V. 2004. Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India: A study of n-Logue kiosk projects at Pabal and Baramati. Masters thesis (un pub.) submitted to the S. J. Mehta School of management, Indian Institute of Technology. Bombay.

Dileep Kumar Guntuku, Aruna Sai Kuna, Sreenath Dixit, and Balaji Venkataraman (2006). Information and Communication technology (ICT) mediated Open Distance Learning (ODL) methods for Agricultural Extension: A case study from a drought prone area of rural south Asia Presented at the WCCA2006 (the World Congress on Computers in Agriculture) held at Orlando, Florida, USA, July 24-26, 2006. Available at http://asae.frymulti.com/abstract.asp?aid=21871&t=1

29 Farrington, J. 1994. Public sector agricultural extension: is there life after structural adjustment? Overseas Development Institute. ISSN: 1356-9228

Keniston, Kenneth, "Grassroots I CT Projects in I ndia: Some Preliminary Hypotheses" ASCI Journal of Management 31(1&2), 2002. Available online at

Qamar, M. K., 2000 (?) Agricultural extension at the turn of the millennium: trends and challenges. FAO Corporate Document Repository

World Bank (1994), "Agricultural Extension: Lessons from completed projects". Operations Evaluation Department Report No. 13000. Washington D.C.: World Bank.

(UNSO, 2000) Report on the status of drought preparedness and mitigation in Sub Saharan Africa. Retrieved March 29, 2005 from http://www.undp.org/seed/unso/concepts&programs/pub-htm/dpm- 1.pdf

30 Using ICT for Improved Extension: More effective drought preparedness through Knowledge Sharing The Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya, India, in partnership with ICRISAT Annexure 3

The Locale The partnership

Addakal, a cluster of 37 hamlets, is chronically drought prone area Information needs appraisal with with lower than average levels in rural families development. Drought causes serious outmigration

Joint development of connectivity Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya is a federation of all-women micro credit groups in Addakal ICRISAT provides training and Q&A support : AMS provides volunteers, space & operational expenses

Ms. Sushma Ms. Madhavi Ms Narmada Ms. Vimalamma Ms. Chandrakala AMS women Volunteers

Good Results to Show… We are looking Forward to… Local families rate AMS Use of new GIS tools for local women volunteers better than drought preparedness standard extension personnel

Indian Space Research 500 trained youth supporting Organization and MSSRF 6000 farm families by 2008 provided AMS with new 2-way video conference facility

The President of India Create new knowledge-rich inducted three AMS livelihood opportunities (e.g. volunteers as Fellows of NPV production) National Virtual Academy

Contact: [email protected], [email protected] Annexure 4

Project AGRID: Establishment of an Online Agricultural Knowledge Grid to Support Improved Food, Income and Livelihood Security for Farmers in India

Concept Note for Consideration by the NAIP under Component –I: ICDS

Introduction

Agriculture is becoming knowledge-intensive. Knowledge can often substitute for land and water and other natural resources. Farmers (the term in this document includes large, medium and small farmers, pastoralists, tribal farmers and landless laborers) need to have access to specific, relevant and timely information on production, trade and credit. There is

⎯ a need for a novel information support service that is based on customizing generic information to suit a specific farm or a local income generating activity; ⎯ the need for vocational education in a flexible, open/distance learning mode (ODL) that is emerging strongly; ⎯ a need to render off-site, off-campus learning support on a continuing basis for students in agricultural his/her education to enhance opportunities for fulfilling employment; ⎯ an unmet demand for capacity strengthening of extension personnel at various levels to provide more effective services to the emerging knowledge demands in farming; ⎯ need for capacity strengthening services for teaching faculty that will allow them to build, manage and sustain the grid of content to support the learning and information needs of a diverse range of stakeholders.

Background and context

There are significant new opportunities and interest in promoting vocational education and life long learning for farmers in India. There is increasing interest in strengthening the agricultural extension services at all levels, to enhance the linkages between extension, universities and research institutes, and to facilitate effective dialogue between farmers and researchers. A key consideration is to augment and strengthen the capacity of the extension workers to absorb and re-use new knowledge that is continually made available.

A number of State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) and the Extension Division of ICAR have launched substantial new programs in outreach. Online or technology-mediated information sharing, instruction and learner support has emerged as a trend in some SAUs such as the Maharashtra Animal and Fisheries Sciences University (MAFSU), and the Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (TANUVAS), while open and distance learning (ODL) programs have been active in the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) since 2005. The Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) has established the Virtual University for Agriculture and Trade as an innovative outreach project. The Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU) has maintained for a long period a school of agriculture with instruction delivered in the mode that is standard for Open Universities (OUs). Internationally, a quick survey reveals that a host of reputed universities in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia have set up highly effective online or distance learning programs in agriculture at every level: certificates of study, diploma/license, and from Bachelors’ degrees to Doctoral programs (see Annexure 1 for details).

Among the institutes of higher learning in technology, there is much interest in promoting technology-mediated information management programs for farmers. The KISSAN-Kerala portal of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), carried out in partnership with the KAU and the State Directorate of Agriculture (with good links to the mass ______Project AGRID: Concept Note media), is an outstanding example. The Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture and Livelihoods (DEAL), a project of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, has developed a novel approach to building agricultural portals (web sites that can deliver a wide range of services). The IIT-Bombay has developed an advanced platform for questions and answers (Q & A) between farmers and experts that will also accumulate the knowledge for re-use in future. The Media Lab Asia under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (CIT) is active in promoting innovative projects involving information as well as instrumentation in support of improved productivity and livelihoods. The International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad has developed the e-Sagu project while the private sector Agriwatch has been active in using the web to reach out to farmers. The Mission 2007 alliance and the Ministry of CIT’s Common Services Centers (CSC) program aim at setting up 1,00,000 rural centers where local families can access networked information services. Thus, it is clear that a number of actors, resources and contextual developments that favor the setting up of online content resources already exist.

In two roundtable consultations organized in February and June 2006 (at ICRISAT, supported by the Commonwealth of Learning -COL), a group of Vice-Chancellors, Deans/Directors of SAUs and senior faculty from the IITs and institutes of higher education in Information Technology (IT) agreed that there was a need to form a grid of e-content in agriculture and allied sectors. The grid should be designed such that it serves the content needs of a wide range of stakeholders and should provide learning support to a variety of learners. This is called AGRID. The core technological aspects of the proposed grid, which is a grid of information and learning portals from various organizations have been described by Srivathsan et al. (2004) and these form the initial specifications (see Annexure 2).

Statement of Purpose and Principle

The mission of the AGrid Consortium is to contribute to improvements in the livelihood, income and food security of farmers through provision of new generation knowledge, learning and information services, and to offer enhanced capacity strengthening and continuing education services to course developers, extension personnel, university students and rural learners.

The AGRID will be implemented by a consortium of partners who will willingly join and sustain it. The principle will be one of cooperative content creation, validation and re-use subject to normal considerations and respect for the intellectual property of the participant institutions.

Goals

Formation and sustenance of a consortium of SAUs, IT resource institutions, ICAR institutes and Divisions and other relevant agencies to participate in the development of a multi-institutional grid of e-content for improved farming and livelihoods. Promoting technology-mediated open and distance learning in agriculture to make vocational education accessible to large numbers of rural youth and women. Developing capacity strengthening and continuing education programs for teachers, extension personnel and agri-entrepreneurs. Building a life-long learning program for farmers for enhanced livelihood security and economic well being, with a special focus on rural women as learners, using the power and advantage of partnerships with the self-help groups (SHG’s). Carry impact assessment studies at all appropriate levels and locations and build a system to internalize stakeholders’ feedback.

______2 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Objectives

Set up a content grid covering 10 participant SAUs and ICAR institutions. The action will begin locally at the participating institutions. Strengthen support infrastructure such as web studio and Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) in all the participant institutions. Develop and validate 2000 hours of vocational ODL material, 500 hours of Continuing Education (CE) and equivalent of 1000 hours of extension material. Enable access to the grid from all the college campuses, field research stations, ODL contact centers and Krishi Vignan Kendras (KVKs) using standard Internet connectivity. Increase the enrollment in three years in ODL or extension engagement programs and initiate action with a focus on bringing in more women learners. Organize specially designed faculty capacity strengthening programs in delivering tech- mediated learning at various levels, and generate 500 hours equivalent online learning material. Develop a protocol to allow well-considered outsourcing of administrative and tech management work to capable Government/Private agencies Develop 10 IT-mediated rural information outreach centers per participating institution in partnership with the CSC and Mission 2007 Alliance and test innovative learning and knowledge sharing processes with the stakeholders through them.

Methodology

The consortium partners with an appreciation of clearly defined roles and responsibilities will carry out this project. All infrastructure improvements will be based on the incrementality rather than outright creation. The SAUs have multiple roles: content creation, validation, instruction and information delivery, and assessment of impact. The IT resource institutions provide design, testing, deployment and capacity strengthening/training services for faculty and senior extension personnel. They also take the lead in developing standards and specifications for content sharing and exchange. The grid practice will be based on the concept developed by IIITM-K and will be further developed through practice. The computer Local Area Network (LAN) in every campus headquarters will be augmented and institutional portals will be designed in a grid-ready form. Key content- related technologies (LMS included) developed by IIT-Kanpur, IITM-K and IIT-Bombay will be included in the grid development process. All Internet connectivity will be sourced from the public domain (such as ERNET and similar agencies) because of lack of access to dedicated high-speed networks. Practice of digital repositories of information and learning objects will be followed and global standards such as International Metadata Standards (IMS) will be adopted for ease of search and sharing across the participating institutions. The repositories will have tools to enable rapid customization of key information at any level, and to deliver such information in print medium or similar others to the learners and users. This will be the key aspect of delivering information to the rural learners and stakeholders in a context specific and relevant manner. Strengthening of faculty capacity in production and validation of shareable e-content through online and real-time sessions with relevant experts will be a significant activity.

______3 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Capacity strengthening of ODL personnel in needs assessment, instructional design and monitoring learners’ progress with support from domain experts in ODL will be another key activity. Facilitating the rapid production of learning materials for use by mass media using the grid-linked repositories as the source will be attempted. Enhancing the capacity of extension personnel to address the challenges of diversification/improvement of rural livelihoods by use of online learning and information objects in real-time and online sessions will be a core activity.

Outputs

Very detailed reports jointly as well as individually produced by various partners will be made available in the public domain.

Improved infrastructure comprising strengthened LAN, web studios and delivery systems at the SAUs and connectivity in contact centers and KVKs New diploma, license and certificate programs covering thousands of new rural and other learners. Highly integrated access to learning and extension material covering different languages. New continuing education programs for teachers, agri-entrepreneurs, and extension personnel

Outcome

The knowledge grid will be a key contribution to further strengthening agriculture extension services. Significant improvement in local/rural capacity in information management leads to higher levels of productivity, income, improved access to the markets and better utilization of public and citizen services at the local level. Large-scale reduction in the cost of production of development oriented education and information material because of cooperative content creation. Unprecedented new opportunities for graduates in agriculture to provide knowledge- based services to a wide range of clients. Rapid customization and localization of generic content will be a key support in disaster preparedness also because a large number of women learners would have been facilitated. A reasonably sized cadre of leaders in information management at various levels starting from the rural extending to the University. New synergies built between IT resource organizations, the SAUs, extension agencies, media organizations and different national programs. New aspects of knowledge management involving Public-Private Partnership would emerge and will be valuable in other sectors in rural development.

What the AGrid is NOT

The AGrid is a collaboration platform for content creation, validation and delivery to a variety of learners. It is NOT involved with granting degrees/certificates. The learning and information material available via the AGrid will be governed by the intellectual property considerations of the contributing institution. AGrid does not provide material for commercial use by third parties. The AGrid is not a substitute for institutional web sites/portals. It facilitates their effective integration.

______4 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Links to National Programs

Complements the ICDS portal building program of ICDS segment of Component –I under the NAIP of ICAR Tools developed on this project can be readily adopted for use in information and knowledge management activities under Components 2 and 3 of NAIP. Derive strength from the NAIP-supported network infrastructure strengthening project Links to ongoing projects of Education and Extension Divisions of ICAR (the library project is an example). The ISRO project for setting up 7000 Village Resource Centers Ministry of CIT, GoI, program to set up 1,00,000 common service centers in rural areas. Practices such as DEAL and AGROPEDIA of IIT-Kanpur, aAQUA of IIT-Bombay, InDev Gateway of CDAC. The ongoing activities supported by the Min. of CIT on digitization of books and documents under the Million Books project. Efforts of the National Knowledge Commission to enhance the quality of education using technology mediation. The NPTEL project anchored in the IIT system provides an example; this project has created 5000 hours of learning material in digital video format.

______5 Project AGRID: Concept Note

List of Partners Consulted in Two Meetings (ICRISAT, 15 February and 29 June 2006)

Institution/Organisation Participants at the Meetings Contact Person

Lead Organization: Tamil Nadu Prof. C Ramasamy, Vice- Prof. C Ramasamy, Vice- Agricultural University (TNAU) Chancellor, Chancellor, Tel:0422-2431788 Coimbatore 641003 Email: [email protected]

Dr V Alagesan, Former Director, ODL Dr R Durai, Director ODL Dr R Durai, Tel: 0422- 5511229/5511429 Fax: 0422- 5511429 Email: [email protected]

International Crops Research Institute Dr V Balaji, Head, Knowledge Dr V Balaji, Ph: 040-3071 for the Semi Arid Tropics, Management and Sharing 3205;Fax:040-3071 3074/75 Patancheru, 502 324, India Email:[email protected]

University of Agricultural Sciences Dr M N Sheelavantar, Vice- Dr M N Sheelavantar, Tel: 080- GKVK Campus, Bangalore - 560 065 Chancellor 23332442 Fax: 080-23330277 Email: [email protected]; uas- [email protected]

Dr Eswarappa, Director of Dr Eswarappa, Tel: 080- Extesnion 23418883 Cell: 09845704627

Kerala Agricultural Univesity Dr K V Peter, Vice-Chancellor Dr M Mohan Das, Tel: 0487- (KAU), Thrissur 680 656 2370367 Fax: 0487-2370019 Cell: 09443 46705 Email: [email protected]

Dr M Mohan Das, former Executive Director, Virtual University for Agricultural Trade, Maharahstra Agriculture and Dr P S Lonkar, Director of Dr P S Lonkar, Tel : 0712- Fisheries Sciences University Extension and Training, 2511784, 785, 787Cell: 093701 (MAFSU), Seminary Hills, Nagpur 48849 Email: 440 006 [email protected]@y ahoo.co.in

Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Prof. F R Sheriff, Professor and Dr V Balakrishnan, Tel: 044 – Sciences University, Madhavaram former Director of Extension 25381506 Fax: 044 - 25362787 Milk Colony, Chennai - 600 051 Education, Email: [email protected]

Dr V Balakrishnan, Professor and HeadDept. of Animal Nutrition Madras Veterinary College,Chennai - 600 007

______6 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Acharya N G Ranga Agril. Dr M Sudarshan Reddy Dr M Sudarshan Reddy University,Rajendranagar Dean of Agriculture Dean of Agriculture Hyderabad 500 030 Tel: 040-24015197 Fax: 040-24015197

Email: [email protected]

University of Agricultural Sciences, Dr L Krishna Naik, Director of Dr L Krishna Naik, Tel:0836- Dharwad - 580 005 Extension 2447494 Fax:0836-2748199 Email:[email protected]

ICAR Institutes

Central Research Institute for Dr S Desai, Senior Scientist, Dr Y S Ramakrsihna, Director Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), ph: 040-24530177 Fax:040- Santoshnagar, Hyderabad 500 059 24531802; email [email protected]

Dr A V M Subba Rao, Scientist (Agrometeorology)

National Academy of Agriculture Dr D Rama Rao, Head, ICM Dr D Rama Rao, 040-24581334 Res. Management (NAARM), Division Email:[email protected] Rajendranagar, Hyderabad 500 030 Dr N Sandhya Shenoy, Principal Scientist, ICM Division

Technology Institutes

Indian Institute of Information Dr K R Srivathsan, Director Dr K R Srivathsan, Tel: 0471- Technology and Management - 2527567 2700777 Fax : 0471- Kerala, Park Centre. Technopark 2527568 Cell: 93494 27233 Campus, Thiruvananthapuram 695 Email: [email protected] 581 [email protected]

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dr T V Prabhakar, Professor, Dr T V Prabhakar and Dr Kanpur, Kanpur-208016 Dept of CSE, Jayanta Chatterjee, 0512- 2597618 Email:[email protected]; [email protected] Dr M D Singh, Project Manager, Media Lab Asia, Dept of CSE

Indian Institute of Technology Dr R Nagarajan,Principal Bombay (IIT, B), Powai , Mumbai Research Scientist 400 076 Mr Anil Bahuman, aAQUA Dr Krithi Ramamritham, Tel: Project 022-25767030 Tel:022-25767740 Cell:098206-33683 Cell:093243-34625 Email: [email protected] Centre for Development of Advanced Dr N Sarat Chandra Babu, Dr NSC Babu, Tel: 040-23401331 Computing (C-DAC), 2nd Floor, Delta Director Fax: 040-23401531 Email: Chambers, Ameerpet, Hyderabad - 500 [email protected] 016

______7 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Dr Kuntal De Dr A Dandekar, Information and Communication [email protected], Tel. : Technology, Post Bag No. 4, Near +91 (079) 30520000 Indroda Circle, Gandhinagar 382007 Fax : +91 (079) 30520010 (Gujarat)

______8 Project AGRID: Concept Note

Annexure 1

An Overview of Distance Learning Degree Programs in Agriculture (excluding I ndia)

The web sites listed below provide detailed information on distance learning programs in various universities in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. The sites were visited in early July 2006.

Online Agriculture Degrees

Agricultural Masters Australasian College AGFA College delivers agriculture programs through distance learning to Australian and international students. Training opportunities include beef and sheep breeding, pasture management, animal nutrition and husbandry, cropping, marketing, risk management, occupational health and safety, wool and sheep classing, shearing, animal health, horticulture, organics, hydroponics and training in natural resource management. Accredited by the Australian National Training Authority.

Iowa State University Iowa State University offers the following degree programs in agriculture:

• Master of Agriculture The core 13 credits of the program emphasize leadership development, technological change, use of statistics, economic issues, and sustainability issues. You select the remaining courses, 14 credits, in consultation with your graduate committee to meet your individual needs and interests. The capstone of the program is a creative component of 4 credits that lets you explore a particular interest area. The creative component is a demonstration of independent creativity with a written report of laboratory, field, or library research. • Master of Science in Agronomy The computer-based program emphasizes practical, professional, and technical skills involved in crop management, soil and water management, and integrated pest management. It is a non- thesis degree.

Programs are delivered statewide via the Iowa Communications Network; and in the U.S. and Canada via CD-ROM and internet. Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Kansas State University Kansas State University offers the following online degrees:

• Master of Agribusiness The Master in Agribusiness at Kansas State University provides agribusiness professionals the knowledge and skills to excel in today's rapidly changing and increasingly complex food and agricultural global economy. Two one-week segments per year on-campus visits required. • Bachelor Degree Completion Program - Animal Science and Industry The program builds on a liberal arts foundation with a concentration in animal science and includes substantial coursework in agriculture, biological and physical sciences, mathematics, statistics and computer science, business and economics.

Kansas State University is accredited by the Northwest Association of Colleges and Schools.

Online College of Oklahoma Online degrees in agriculture offered by Oklahoma State University:

• Master of Agricultural Education • Master of Agriculture

Delivery methods incorporate interactive video, telecourses, Internet, audioconferencing, computer assisted instruction and audiotape.

Oregon State University Oregon State University offers an online Bachelor of Science in General Agriculture degree completion program. Accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges.

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University offers the following online agriculture degree program:

• Master of Agriculture The degree program is intended to prepare individuals for leadership roles in education, natural resource management, the extension service, and many professional careers in agriculture and life sciences. This is a non-thesis degree program which emphasizes the development of problem-solving skills and the practical aspects of academic coursework. A highly individualized degree, you can select degree plans in the following areas:

- Agricultural Development - Fisheries - Plant Sciences - Natural Resources Development - Poultry Sciences - Wildlife

Delivery methods include Internet, videoconferencing and CD-ROM. There are no residency requirements. Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University and Texas A&M University offer a joint Doctor of Education in Agricultural Education. Courses are taught using the Trans-Texas Videoconference Network, a web-based design using WebCT, the Internet, and a variety of other methods, including appropriate face-to-face meetings. Texas Tech University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

University of Georgia, Center for Continuing Education University of Georgia, Center for Continuing Education offers the following program in turfgrass management:

• Principles of Turfgrass Management This course is designed for all professionals in this fast-growing industry, including those affiliated with private lawn care companies, public parks and recreation areas, school grounds, sod production, landscape management firms, golf courses, cemeteries, athletic fields, and other public and private turf facilities.

Successful completion earns the designation "Certified Turfgrass Professional." The Georgia Center also offers certification for those who wish to pursue a series of college credit courses in turfgrass management and related subjects.

University of Florida The University of Florida offers a Master of Agriculture via distance learning technologies. Courses are delivered via interactive videoconferencing, videotape lecturing, and online.

University of Illinois Online University of Illinois Online offers the following online certificate program:

• Professional Development Sequence in Dairy Science The professional development sequence in dairy science includes a series of structured courses delivered by the Internet using an interactive course delivery system. A certificate will be awarded to students who successfully complete the introductory class (Phase 1), a minimum of two of the advanced classes (Phase 2), and a minimum of two of the lab techniques (Phase 3). The certificate will be valuable to adult students needing advanced training including veterinarians, livestock nutritionists, extension educators, livestock producers, and herd managers.

The classes are taught on the Internet and CD ROM. Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

University of Nebraska - Lincoln The University of Nebraska - Lincoln offers a Master of Agriculture degree through distance education technologies for working agricultural professionals. Students are able to individualize their particular curriculum programs to best meet their own career objectives. Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

University of Northwestern Ohio The University of Northwestern Ohio offers a Diploma in Agribusiness Management entirely online. Students completing this one-year program will be prepared for entry-level positions in the agribusiness management community - wholesale, retail or production. Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

University of Tennessee at Martin University of Tennessee at Martin offers online a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Operations Management. The MSAOM curriculum is based on two primary knowledge bases: agricultural systems science (which includes management science and agricultural engineering technology) and agribusiness/business. The breadth of the MSAOM degree is enhanced with courses in international agriculture, agricultural science, and statistics/advanced mathematics. Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Washington State University Washington State University offers the following online degree programs in agriculture:

• Master of Science in Agriculture Emphasis of the Master of Science in Agriculture program is on the agricultural professional, practitioner, and educator. • Bachelor of Science in Agriculture The Bachelor of Science in Agriculture is an upper-division degree completion program that enables students to complete the final two years of a bachelor's degree without going to a Washington State University campus.

Courses are delivered directly to students using distance education technologies. Accredited by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges.

Veterinary Science Degrees Online

Penn Foster College Established in 1890, Penn Foster College is one of the oldest and largest distance learning institutions in the world. Students can study online, in print, or a combination of each—you decide which method best suits your learning style. • Veterinary Technician Associate Degree There are certain skills you need to begin a career as a veterinary technician. With Penn Foster distance learning, you can earn your Associate in Specialized Technology Degree and become a Veterinary Technician quickly and conveniently. Course includes Animal Anatomy and Physiology, Medical Mathematics, Veterinary Office Management, Animal Nutrition, Reproduction, Genetics, Aging and more.

Penn Foster College is licensed by the Arizona State Board of Private Postsecondary Education and is authorized to award Associate of Science Degrees. Penn Foster is nationally accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) in Washington, D.C which is listed with the U.S. Department of Education

Penn Foster College offers affordable, all-inclusive pricing—among the lowest of all career schools— and 0% interest financing and customized payment plans.

Canadian residents: Penn Foster's partner school, ICS, offers similar programs to residents of Canada.

St. Petersburg College St. Petersburg College offers the following veterinary programs through distance learning:

• Associate in Science in Veterinary Technology The program is designed for veterinary hospital employees seeking a veterinary technician degree. The program is accredited by the Committee on Veterinary Technician Education and Activities of the American Veterinary Medical Association. • Veterinary Hospital Manager Certificate The business courses identified in this certificate program will meet the educational requirements for the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association examination for Certified Veterinary Practice Managers. The eight courses will cover the areas of personnel, accounting and finance, marketing, legal requirements, budgeting, planning, and computer use and applications. Each course is specifically designed for individuals currently working in veterinary hospitals or those with previous experience in veterinary hospital management.

St. Petersburg College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

The Australian Center for Correspondence Courses:

(agriculture courses online) http://www.acseduonline.com/courses/product_listings.aspx?CatID=15

(agriculture and animal husbandry certificates and diplomas by correspondence) http://www.acs.edu.au/courses/product_listings.aspx?catid=Agriculture

(horticulture certificates and degrees) http://www.acs.edu.au/courses/horti.aspx

(examples) http://www.acs.edu.au/courses/product_listings.aspx?catid=general%20horticulture

A different model of distance education in agriculture: University of Idaho http://aee.ag.uidaho.edu/distance/programs.htm

Hybrid model at the Colarado State U: http://www.learn.colostate.edu/degrees/agriculture.asp#curriculum

(emphasis on Extension education) I mperial College DL program offers two PG courses in Agri Business and Agri Economics http://www.imperial.ac.uk/distancelearning/course/aeb/ag_econ.htm University of Manitoba, Canada http://www.umanitoba.ca/afs/school/distanceed.html

North Carolina State U LEAP: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/leap/#1

This is a good online resource (below) on web-based agricultural instruction although slightly dated; it is confined to the universities in the US. http://www.adec.edu/agtel.html

An important program in natural resources management operated by a consortium of US-based institutions. http://cnr.iddl.vt.edu/

From the Purdue U: http://www.geaps.com/dist_learn/index.cfm

From the New Mexico State: http://vrc.nmsu.edu/distance/degrees/details.cfm?id=46

The Pullman-based WSU program in DL mode: http://www.msag.wsu.edu/MS-Ag-ovrvw.htm

University of Queensland in Australia has a comprehensive DL program in agricultural and veterinary sciences http://www.uq.edu.au/nravs/index.html?page=44567

Non-degree online courses in agriculture http://www.aglearn.net/ from Sakatchewan, Canada: http://www.siast.sk.ca/virtualcampus/educationtraining/agriculture/agvirtual.htm

I I CA-Jamaica project: non-degree DL training http://www.agroinfo.org/caribbean/iicacarc/jamaica/adltcnew.htm

Non-degree online training offered by the USDA: http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/aboutwic/ http://www.nal.usda.gov/wicworks/WIC_Learning_Online/index.html

Annexure-2 (Selected Slides)

QUALITY EDUCATION THROUGH WEB ASSISTED TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED INSTRUCTION – SOME TIPS FOR VASAT

K.R. Srivathsan Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K), and Coordinator, KISSAN-Kerala Email: [email protected]

ICRISAT – VASAT Seminar Hyderabad Dec. 07, 2005 KISSAN-Kerala Services Model for Knowledge Generation and Empowerment 2 4 Rural 1 3 Communities 5 6 Agriculture Organizations TV A B District Offices C KISSAN Health Data State Aggregation Information 7 Info. Services Centre Network Access D Education F E [VISTA] 8 9 2 KISSAN Kerala Portal Variety of Interactive Information Services Daily Market Information; Virtual market Portal Call Centre: Post Queries and get Expert Answers, Weather Information; Soil Information Crop Directory Î 55 crops full details GIS based Agri-Advisory Services for Locale Specific dynamic information Farming Practices Fertilizers and Pesticides advisory E-publications Î ~ 200 visitors per day; > 3000 Answered queries

3 KISSAN Krishideepam TV Serial: A Broadcast TV based Agri-Info. Service

Enriched with high quality multimedia program Success Stories, Best practices, Market prices analysis, weather information. Agri-Advisory services, Seasonal advisory services Completed 109 unbroken weekly episodes Telecast 3 times per week over popular Asianet channel in Kerala More than 2.5 million viewers. Î Proposing Researched and Educative TV Episodes on Trade Related and Competitiveness of Kerala Agriculture. 4 Integrating Call Centre & Extension Services Secondary Level Agriculture Call Centre at IIITM-K integrated with KISSAN Portal based information management. Attending ~ 20 calls / day Query Answering System: Answered more than 3000 queries during last 4 months. All answered Queries available in the portal with classification and search facilities. Forwarding actionable Call Centre / Portal Queries to nearest Extension Services Office for follow up.

5 KISSAN’S KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AGRCIULTURE & RELATED AREAS COMMODITY BOARDS A TRADE RELATED G ENTITIES KRISHI BHAVANS, KVKs R. EXTENSION SERVICES S T KERALA BACKEND SERVICES A AGRCIULTURAL KNOWLEDGE ACCESS K UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT AND E PH PORTAL DELIVERY H AGR. RESEARCH O ORGANIZATIONS L D GOVT. DOA E KISSAN@IIITM-K Smart Interfaces R for special S SWAN, Universities, applications EDUCATION GRID KISSAN services for different groups to provide Knowledge Enabled Services – May be accessed or serviced from different VKCs, or, VRCs

I nputs: Group/ Virtual Knowledge I nformation, Enterprise Decisions & Requests, Action Out Observations I nformation Group to other Global Data Workflow Groups Processes Group Knowledge Process Capture & & Computing Communications Base Business Model and Services Collections Excellence

VASAT: Conference and Journal publications

Paper 1: Rural Knowledge Centers as Facilitators of New Learning Opportunities for the Rural Families: a case study Extended abstract Contributed to ICSI2006 (International Conference on Statistics and Informatics in Agricultural Research conference), New Delhi, India. 27-30 December, 2006. available at http://www.iasri.res.in/icsi2006/theme3/balaji.pdf.

Paper 2:Rapid Customization of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs): A new paradigm for Content Generation and Localization for Open Distance Agricultural Education and Extension Presented at the PCF4 (the Fourth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open learning) held at Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 30 October - 3 November, 2006. available at http://pcf4.dec.uwi.edu/viewabstract.php?id=300

Paper 3: Rural Knowledge Centers: Partners in Promoting a New ODL Paradigm Presented at the PCF4 (the Fourth Pan Commonwealth Forum on Open learning) held at Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 30 October - 3 November, 2006. available at http://pcf4.dec.uwi.edu/viewpaper.php?id=326

Paper 4:Information and Communication technology (ICT) mediated Open Distance Learning (ODL) methods for Agricultural Extension: A case study from a drought prone area of rural south Asia Presented at the WCCA2006 (the World Congress on Computers in Agriculture) held at Orlando, Florida, USA, July 24-26, 2006. Available at http://asae.frymulti.com/abstract.asp?aid=21871&t=1

Paper 5: SCORM Compliant Web-Based Content Management Tool for Extending Viable Information to Rural Community in an Affordable Way Learning Technology publication of IEEE computer society, available at http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/issues/january2005/index.html#_Toc98675004

Paper 6: “Agricultural Extension With Information And Communication Technology (ICT) Mediated Open Distance Learning (ODL) Methods: A Case Study From Rural South India” published in Proceedings of Community Informatics Research Network 2005 (CIRN 2005, http://www.cirn2005.org/) Conference held at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.

Paper 1 Home

Rural Knowledge Centers as Facilitators of New Learning Opportunities for the Rural Families: a case study

Dileep Kumar Guntuku Department of ICT For Agriculture, DA-IICT, Gandhi Nagar

Sreenath Dixit Division of Resource Management, CRIDA, Hyderabad

Balaji Venkataraman Knowledge Management and Sharing Group, ICRISAT

Abstract

There are various names and descriptions for rural knowledge centers, but their main role is facilitate the access to managed or direct information services for rural families. India is home to a very large number of pilot projects in this sector over the last about ten years. The number of internet-connected rural knowledge centers varies but is believed to be close to 10000 as of mid-2006. The recent decision of the Government of India to establish about 1,00,000 Common Service Centers has generated altogether new possibilities and opportunities to design and make available a wide range of information services for the rural poor in India.

Earlier studies indicated that the access to government information, and information on education were the two priority information demands. A number of projects include provision of governance-related information as a key service. Education mostly relating to IT literacy is offered on many projects although systematic efforts to measure the importance and impact of such information are not yet available.

One of the significant challenges that India faces is the recurrence of disasters that lead to large scale disruption of economic and development activities and causes considerable distress among the victims. Over a period of time, relief measures have become affordable in many situations but the cumulative losses are staggering. The Disaster Management Authority of India has identified drought and earthquakes as among the phenomena that can cause deep and lasting distress among the victims while generating massive economic losses to the system as a whole. There is a need to identify new systems that combine early warning arrangements with access for appropriate support services.

Over the last two years, ICRISAT has made an effort in partnership with CRIDA to study the possible use of rural knowledge centers in enhancing drought preparedness at the micro-regional level among the rural families. The pilot is premised on the assumption that a country such as India has reasonable arrangements for early warning communication in a top-down manner. International experience shows that such top- down flow of important information must combine with a bottom-up process for its rapid and effective use by the intended recipients, namely the rural families. The rural knowledge centers, operating in an interactive hub-and-spokes model for local value- addition and dissemination and capture, could provide the right interfaces to generate such blended communication.

ICRISAT and partners started out with a detailed information needs assessment process covering all the villages in the Addakal Mandal, Mahbub Nagar District of AP State. The information needs assessment revealed that there were significant gaps in the availability of and access to natural resource management information by the rural families. There was striking level of lack of awareness about the general extent and consequences of drought, and most families had assumed that out-migration was the only easy option. Thus, as part of the drought preparedness information system, opportunities for learning about NRM issues at a basic level needed to be available.

ICRISAT’s Virtual Academy for the Semi Arid Tropics (www.vasat.org ) attempts to combine the advantages and power of contemporary process in technology-mediated open and distance learning to provide such education-based communication arrangement in Addakal Mandal. The principal local partner is a community-based NOGO called the Adarsha Mahila Samaikhya, which is a federation of village-level micro-credit groups in the mandal. The coverage extends to all the villages while the federation has a membership of about 6000 individuals, all women (as of September 2006). The AMS has provided good quality space and furniture and electricity for the rural knowledge centers in three villages while its own premises act as the local hub that has access to the Internet. The village access centers act as channels for two-way communication between the hub and the rural families. The hub itself is supported by an online content management system, modification of a standard learning management system hosted by ICRISAT. The CMS allows questions from the rural families to be logged for viewing by ICRISAT and CRIDA-based experts.

Over a period of time, we found that it took an average of seven days for a farmer to receive a response that he considered satisfactory. This was entirely due to the way the questions were phrased and experts often sought more information prior to developing a solution. This resulted in cycles of information flow prior to a solution being delivered. ICRISAT scholars conducted a study with the AMS women volunteers and helped them learn the essentials of pest management using technically simple, literacy-imparting modules. The learning process took place over a period of 18 hours spread over almost a week. The process facilitator used CDROM-based modules. The lessons learnt were evident in the way the quality of questions changed. More information that describes the context was added to every question by the AMS volunteer, and this resulted in dramatic reduction in the time taken to deliver a useful solution. The average time now is about one day, often solutions being delivered within the same day.

This experience has led us to design a larger learning process that involves rural knowledge center facilitators in many other parts of India, in collaboration with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation through their Virtual Resources Centers project. In the initial trials, a two-way video-conferencing facility was used, and we found that the quality of both expert-farmer and farmer-farmer interactions was appreciable. In the second set of trials, we have started online learning process for the Addakal volunteers on groundnut cultivation with video-conferencing as an important tool. The process is continuing and the initial results show that with sufficient literacy imparted, the rural knowledge center volunteers of the AMS are able to decide on the aspects of learning modules that should be localized. Thus, it emerges that rural knowledge centers can facilitate local learning provided adequate efforts are made to generate such material. Learning capacity even outside a classroom milieu is considerable if flexible methods are followed and learning is delivered as granules. Technology-mediated learning is thus a possibility for rural families in their quest to find more sustainable resource management options.

We are grateful to the ICT-KM program of the CGIAR for partial financial support.

Home Paper 2 Home

Rapid Customization of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs): A new paradigm for Content Generation and Localization for Open Distance Agricultural Education and Extension

ABSTRACT

In the recent days, content designers and developers of electronic learning are being introduced new technology dependent approaches for content generation. Most of the electronic learning content always developed for a specific purpose based on a specific technology, which is highly expensive and time consuming process.

In this paper the authors present a new paradigm for content generation and localization based on an instructional technology called “Reusable Learning Objects”, which follow the features of reusability, interoperability, durability and accessibility. This technology would bring a major change in designing and developing cost effective educational material for mass agricultural education and extension in an open distance education approach.

INTRODUCTION

In many parts of the world, dissatisfying experience in conventional agricultural education and extension has induced search for more appropriate ways to deal with the complexity of rural development and create sustainable forms of agriculture. As a result different technology mediated approaches are being emerged for satisfying the learner needs. It includes the delivery of content via internet, intranet/extranet, audio and videotape, satellite and CD-ROM. Such applications are called as open distance education approaches i.e., computer-based learning, web-based learning, virtual classrooms and digital collaboration.

Advances in Information and Communication technologies, specifically Multimedia, Networking, and Software Engineering have promoted the apparition of a huge amount of learning resources. But most of the electronic learning content is being developed for a specific purpose based on a specific technology for satisfying the content needs of learners in an open learning approach.

The public agricultural extension and education systems can not afford to create the electronic learning content for specific purpose following a specific technology. This is because, the content and information needs of the learners, and farm families varies from region to region. So the creation of need based location spcific electronic learning content is highly expensive and time consuming process.

In this paper, we desribe a paradigm for rapid generation of need based content from a generic available Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) pool, for satisfying the information needs of learners and farm families. We also describe a framework to use this content in an effordable way at minimal required infrastructure, for enhancing the effectivenss of agriculture extension and education.

REUSABLE LEARNING OBJECTS

RLO is a specific chunk of digitized instructional content that can be reused in many different courses. According to Dahl and Nygaard, 1966 Learning Objects are elements of a new type computer-based instruction grounded in the object-oriented paradigm of computer science,

6 Object-orientation highly values the ceration of components (called “objects”) that can be reused in multiple contexts. Reigeluth and Nelson (1997) suggest that when teachers first gain access to instructional materials, they often break the materials down into their constituent parts. They then reassemble these parts in ways that support their individual instructional goals. This is the fundamental idea behind RLOs: instructional designers can build instructional components that can be reused number of times in different learning contexts. These RLOs can be tailored according to the specific needs and deliverable over the Internet, meaning that any number of people can access and use them simultaneously. Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions. To facilitate the widespread adoption of the learning objects approach, the Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) formed in 1996 to develop and promote instructional technology standards (LTSC, 2000). Without such standards, universities, corporations, and other organizations around the world would have no way of assuring the interoperability of their instructional technologies, specifically their RLOs. Though many standards are available such as ARIADNE1, IMS2, AICC3, SCORM4 etc.. we adopted SCORM specifications for making our RLOs technically independent.

SCORM SPECIFICATIONS Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a suite of technical standards and speciations given by ADL5, that enable web-based learning systems to find, import, share, reuse, and export learning content in a standardized way. The purpose of SCORM is to achieve interoperability, reusability, accessibility and durability (ADL, 2000).

BUILDING OF SCORM COMPLIANT RLOS REPOSITORY The repository, in this context, refers to the server/computer where RLOs organized and stored. The newly created RLOs will be continuously added to this repository in an organized way. Creation of RLOs An RLO can be created with the help of objects available in the repository or by new user defined objects. The design and development of RLO follows the pedagogy and SCORM specifications. The SCORM specifications include both Content Aggregation Model (CAM) and Run Time Environment (RTE). The CAM deals with the process of creating, discovering and gathering together simple assets into complex sharable learning objects and the organising of those learning objects into a predefined sequence for delivery. RTE deals with delivery of RLOs. For instance: Aphid is an RLO (Fig 1) created with simple assets (two images and text). This instruction describes about the Fig 1: Aphid RLO description, damage symptoms and management of aphids with images.

1 Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe http://www.ariadne-eu.org/

2 Instructional Management Systems http://www.imsglobal.org/ 3 AICC – Aviation Industry CBT committee http://www.aicc.org/ 4 SCORM – Sharable Content Object Reference Model 5 ADL – Advanced Distributed Learning http://www.adlnet.gov/index.cfm

7 The RLO can be developed in any format i.e., html, flash, .doc, .ppt, jpeg, gif etc.. This particular approach enables the content authors to use the content available in any technical format. The content authors are much more interested on content rather than on technology. CUSTOMIZATION OF RLOS

This section desribes the step by step procedure to creat an electronic learning content from an RLOs pool. Course Organization: Content authors have to identify the subject of interest and develop the relationship between the RLOs. According to this, authors and designers should organize the sections and subsections of the course. Linking RLOs: Tailor or link the RLOs using any editor having nice user-friendly GUI, ADL SCORM Editor, RELOAD Editor to name a few. Customization of RLOs using RELOAD editor has been explained here (Figure 2). Customization of RLOs: After selecting the New > ADL SCORM 1.2 Package from File menu, open the desired section of repository in reload editor left resource pan. Add an organization for new course by right click on the organization available at right manifest pan (top frame), and change the organization name according to the course title by renaming at right attribute pan (bottom frame). Now drag and drop the RLOs from left resource pan to right manifest pan. Change section and sub section names according to the new course. For previewing the new course click on Preview Content Package from view menu. And click on the Zip Content Package from File menu to create new course package if the new course is ready in a desired shape.

Figure 2 Process of customization of RLOs for creating an electronic course

8 Delivery: Deliver these packages to learners by uploading these into Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS), Content Management System (CMS) (or) develop an API to provide RTE.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

We tested these content packages on ATutor LCMS (configured an open source software) and ACADO CMS (configured a commercial software). The preliminary observations showed satisfactory results. We downloaded the SCORM based RLO courses available in ATutor and played it in ACADO Course Management System as a course. In Acado we have created a new course out of this course package by making changes such as delete undesired RLOs, rename few RLOs according to the new course requirement. For instance, we have downloaded the chickpea complete course package, contain Production Practices (from land preparation to harvesting), Insect Pests, and Diseases, from ATutor and uploaded it into ACADO. In ACADO we deleted the Production Practices and Diseases sections, and further edited the text to create a new course- Chickpea Insect pests. This particular experiment provided satisfactory results and prooved that the SCORM based RLO customized course packages can be playable in any standard LCMS/CMS. The entire process took only few minutes. In our Virtual Acadmy for the Semi Arid Tropics (VASAT, http://www.vasat.org) project we follow this approach for creating electronic distance learning modules. Our learning modules are available at http://www.vasat.org/learning_resources/learning_resources.htm for non commercial usage, testing and feedback. ADOPTOBILITY and LOCALIZATION

Adoptobility We have organized workshops for agricultural scientists and university professors to test this frame work. In the first workshop scientists from NIH6 (India) and ICRISAT7 (India) participated, and in the second workshop Professors and Deans of 5 state agricultural universities were participated. At the end of the workshops the collectedfeedback from them Revealed that more than 98 per cent participants expressed their happiness and acceptance to this approach. Further they expressed, this methodology is more appropraite for rapid electronic content generation that can be effectively used to facilitate mass education in an effordable way with ICT mediated open distance approaches. Moreover they stated that this would bring a significant difference in the current agricultural education and extension systems. The outcome of this workshop eventually led to formation of AGrid (Agricultural Education/Extension Grid for knowledege empowerment, and capacity building for farmer, TOT personnel and other stakeholders). The AGrid consists 7 State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) and three Indian Istitute of Technology (IITs) with one co-ordination organization (ICRISAT). The SAUs actively participate in knowledge contribution and IITs provide technical support. This is under pipeline for creating knowledge repository.

Localization We in our ICRISAT-VASAT project, use research results to generate RLO based learning modules in English by adopting ICT mediated Open Distance Learaning methodlogy. The partner organizataions of VASAT at various locations used these learning modules and

6 NIH- National Institute of Hydrology

7 ICRISAT- International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics http://www.icrisat.org

9 converted them in the local languages. For example, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd. (MKCL)8 translated VASAT learning modules on coping with drought to Marathi (local language of Maharasthra) and uploaded this into their CMS. The MKCL used these learning modules in a program to bring awareness on drought among 30000 high school students. Unlike in MKCL, we have some partner organizations had no experiences to convert the learning modules in English to their local language. For the benefit of these organizations we use ICT mediated frameworks for generating location specific information from generic information. In this section we discussed a case study, which explains a framework developed at ICRISAT- VASAT office for the benefit of local partner organizataions to generate location specific learning content from generic information. Case study The Aadarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS), one of the partner organizations of VASAT, is a federation of all-women micro-credit societies. It is located in Addakal area, one of the drought prone areas of South India. The VASAT project established Village Information Centers in this region by partnering with AMS, with an objective to satisfy the information needs of rural residents. Both the partner organizations involved the communities since inception of the project. The hub and spokes model9 was applied for carrying the information dissemination flows in this region. The project team and communities hosted the hub in AMS building, and spokes in rural community buildings. The ICRISAT-VASAT provided the technical infrastructure and the AMS and communities agreed to provide the operational costs. The ICRISAT-VASAT team trained the AMS volunteers on basic computer operations, Telugu (local language of this region) digitation, and Video Conferening (VC) operation. The ICRISAT-VASAT team used ISRO10 provided video conferencing infrastructure for organizing virtual classes from January 2006. Though ICRISAT has many learning modules, virtual classes started on groundnut at the request of AMS volunteers, and Addakal farm communities. The resource person from ICRISAT-VASAT discusses with the rural women about the good agricultural practices related to land preparation, suitable improved varieties, sowing methods, water requirement, fertilizer

and pesticide applications and harvesting, over VC in the Fig 3 Virtual Classes regional language by projecting the RLO based generic modules in English (Fig 3). During these sessions the women noted down the important points relevant to them. In addition to this VASAT provided multimedia CDs containing the content in picture format with voice over to them.

8 MKCL – Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd. at http://www.mkcl.org/ 9 Hub and Spokes Model – The hub is generally a set up with reasonable computing facility and Internet access. This is where the value addition to generic information derived from the networks is carried out, and location specific information is generated. The spokes are rural access points linked to this hub either by telephone or internet. In this village information centers project hub is hosted in AMS building and spokes are hosted in respective village community buildings. The trained AMS volunteers operate the hub and spokes activities.

10 ISRO- Indian Space Research Organisation http://www.isro.org/

10 Following these virtual classes the trained rural women organized farmers meetings in the respective villages in the evening hours and shared their notes with them. The questions from the farmers were reviewed during the session. The AMS volunteers digitized the content and prepared powerpoint slides in the local language (Telugu) for future usage. The AMS volunteers, trained rural women, with higher secondary level school education and farm community background, developed locally relevant information from the ICRISAT generic learning modules on groundnut by following this ICT mediated open distance framework. These learning modules are rich in locally accepted words.

CONCLUSION

The most crucial problem that existed today is the creation of need based location spcific electronic learning content in an affordable way, for mass agricultural extension education in an open distance mode. In this paper, the presented frame work addressed this issue effectively, i.e., rapid genration of desired learning content from Reusable Learning Objects (reusable, interoperatble, durable, and accesible) resource pool. We have also presented the acceptance of this methodology by different actors in the open distance education system. Not only the highly educated professionals, but also the trained rural women effectively used this framework for generating the content, to satisfy their information needs. The discussed case study in this paper explained how the trained rural women with higher secondary level high school education and farm community background generated the location specific learning modules from the generic information by following an ICT mediated open distance education framework.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank DA-IICT, ICRISAT and AMS for providing us an opportunity to carry out this study. We would like to acknowledge the technical guidance from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and financial support from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Knowledge Management (KM) program of Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). We greatly value the encouragement and incomparable affection from the colleagues of ICRISAT, scientists of NIH, Faculty members of Agril Universities, and members of the rural communities of Jaanampeta, Kommireddypalli and Vemula during the tenure of this study.

REFERENCES

Dahl, O. J. & Nygaard, K. (1966). SIMULA - An algol based simulation language. Communications of the ACM, 9 (9), p. 671-678.

Reigeluth, C. M. & Nelson, L. M. (1997). A new paradigm of ISD? In R. C. Branch & B. B. Minor (Eds.), Educational media and technology yearbook (Vol. 22, pp. 24-35). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.

LTSC. (2000). Learning technology standards committee website [On-line]. Available: http://ltsc.ieee.org/

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Paper 3 Home

Rural Knowledge Centers: Partners in Promoting a New ODL Paradigm

Introduction

Nearly 70% of India population is still rural and dependent on agriculture and allied activities. Agriculture as an enterprise in India has become very challenging. It is getting more and more knowledge intensive. According to the Indian National Commission on Farmers (2004), farmers and rural entrepreneurs need dynamic information relating to meteorological, management and marketing factors as related to crops and animal husbandry, fisheries, agro-forestry and agro- processing. The new approach to productivity improvement and employment generation is also information and knowledge intensive. In the context of globalization of trade, there is a need for launching a genetic (i.e. relating to genetically modified farm products), legal (i.e. IPR and Farmers’ and Breeders’ Rights), quality (i.e. sanitary and phytosanitary measures and codex alimentaris standards), and trade (i.e. prices in home and external markets) literacy movement.

The present agricultural extension system is inadequate, both in terms of number of personnel and reach, to handle the complexities of the situation. There is presently a disconnect between what farm families need by way of generic and dynamic information and what the conventional extension agencies are able to provide. It is also important to address the need for demand driven and value added information that is time and location specific. There is a strongly-felt need for knowledge transfers between and across rural communities, scientists, educators, administrators, health care providers, technology enablers on local agro-ecological and socio- cultural conditions of each village, and also relating to various farming methods and techniques.

This can be effectively addressed through a network of Rural Knowledge Centers (RKC’ s) or village information centers that have modern information and communication facilities (ICT’s) for information gathering and dissemination. With a network of RKC’ s in place, families in rain-fed and dryland areas can access their information needs with facilitation from a band of well-trained information volunteers. This system can also cater to information needs related to healthcare, credit and marketing.

Strategy

Though India has made impressive ICT based growth in the service sector, it has been largely urban centered and rural India is yet to fully harness the benefits of ICT-led knowledge economy. This segment living in rural and semi-urban areas is however the nation’s core strength and determines the demand and supply base for a range of goods and services. Consumer goods companies, automobile manufacturers, TV and radio producers have proven the strength of this segment by expanding into rural areas. The emergence of Rural Knowledge Centers and info- kiosk movement in India largely promoted by NGOs and corporate sector, has demonstrated that the local Panchayats and self-help groups can take advantage of appropriate information and communication technologies and with this facility, they can easily access the scientific and technical knowledge they need, to solve local problems with greater precision.

India is now in a position to take the benefits of the Internet, community radio, cable TV and vernacular press to all the 600,000 villages within the next few years. A National Alliance for Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Center (www.mission2007.org) has been formed to mobilize the power of partnerships among the public and private sectors, academia, mass media and civil society organizations. Thus, every village has a strong potential to turn into a learning center.

ODL for Agriculture and Livelihoods: The Triple Helix Approach

That VKCs can be strategic partners for promoting ODL in agriculture and livelihoods to bring about rural transformation is premised on creating a viable blend of three different recent trends in development:

(i) International and national agricultural research that leads to the creation and validation of useful knowledge in all areas relating to drought mitigation and management (this includes validated information on indigenous practices as well; the term, “traditional knowledge” includes this as well). (ii) Applications of modern information and communication technologies in rural development (ICT4D), which is fast emerging as a key trend in development research. (iii) The Open Distance Learning paradigm that aims at education of masses of people in a highly flexible manner; it needs to be creatively adapted to suit the requirements of individuals who have little or no exposure to the class room milieu.

The approach has been to blend them to develop a novel program of extension communication and education that will help build more effective linkages between large numbers of rural women and men and expert organizations across national or regional boundaries. This we believe will provide the basis for a customizable, mass education process that is built on rapid-delivery techniques. We try to present these components as the three strands of a triple helix where each strand is “in touch” with the other two strands at all the points.

Rural Information Hub as an Access Point ODL for Agriculture and Livelihoods

(1) Addakal, AP State, India Addakal is a development block headquarters in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh State. It is one of the poorest regions in India. It is a cluster of 37 villages, spread over an area of 19,397 ha; 15% of this area is covered by irrigated land, 60% by rain-fed lands, and remaining 25% is considered as ‘wasteland.’ The district comes under Southern Telengana agro-climatic zone; annual rainfall varies from 391 to 542.6 mm. Most of the tube-wells, open wells and tanks in this area are dried up, eventually the area turned into highly drought prone.

According 2001 census conducted by the Government of India, the population and the literacy rate of this area is 46,380 (male: 50.57%, female: 49.43%) and 35% (male: 66%, female: 34%), respectively. Over 75% workers are engaged in agriculture, dairy farming and allied activities. High risk associated with low investment capacity of farmers often results in higher rate of out migration, food insecurity and poverty. The main agriculture crops are castor, groundnut, maize, chickpea, pigeonpea, sorghum, pearl millet, paddy and orchard crops. Similar to other SAT regions, Addakal also depends on the livestock. Nearly 70,000 sheep, 9000 cattle and 8000 goats are helping the poor people of Addakal to survive the vagaries of harsh climate.

14 This area consists of 8639 houses, 10 post offices, 998 telephone connections, 1 government hospital, 8 veterinary hospitals (one doctor is available for all the hospitals), 1 government junior college, 9 government high schools, 21 government elementary schools, 1 Anganvaadi Kendras (government baby care centers), 10 dairies led by women, 1 library and 3 banks including the all-women Aadarsha Mahila Bank.

However, due to the pressures of social and cultural factors and due to the inability of the local economics to support the poorer sections of the community, migration and in recent times suicides have become noticeable coping mechanisms of the community.

ICRISAT has been partnering with the Adarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS-Adarsha Women's Welfare Organization) since 2004 to foster learning and information exchange between rural families and expert institutions. The umbrella project for this activity is the Virtual Academy for the Semi Arid Tropics (VASAT- www.vasat.org). The AMS is a legally founded federation of village level all-women micro-credit groups. The AMS covers 37 villages in Addakal and has a membership of almost 5200 women, most of them from poor households. The AMS hosts the hub infrastructure comprising a bank of PC's, and a low-cost satellite connectivity to the Internet. The AMS has developed a support system comprising a woman manager of the hub and three part time workers providing network services in three villages. VASAT made an attempt to train the highly motivated semi-literate rural women belonging to AMS. VASAT organized a computer literacy training programs to these selected rural women in two phases. The focus of the first phase is to train them on basic computer operations, working with MS office and troubleshooting. The second phase concentrated on Telugu (the local vernacular language) digitization working with Telugu software.

In the initial stages, a blend of off-line CDs and email was used to facilitate learning at the hub on drought issues. Over a period of two years, the capabilities of the workers at the AMS matured to a level where a variety of questions from the farm families are carefully supplemented with local information and then relayed to distant experts via email. The trained rural women themselves would provide solutions to the farmer questions from the questions repository built by them from time to time. In case a new question was received they would approach ICRISAT experts via email. Thus a database of most frequently asked questions by the farmers of Addakal region has been built locally. It serves as an important resource for the information center from which the trained facilitator can dig out for an answer to a question that has already been asked by the farmers of that region. There is a significant reduction in the time needed to receive expert responses. This is possible only because of improved capabilities of the hub operators and networking village volunteers in an ODL mode.

The Addakal hub has been selected as a Village Resource Center (VRC) of the Village Resource Center project of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO- www.isro.gov.in ) and our partner, the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (www.mssrf.org). ISRO has provided the AMS with satellite-based 2-way video link along with a downlink to ICRISAT. In the initial stages the ICRISAT and AMS organized live interactions with the experts; later on, based on the expressed interest of trained rural women and rural farm communities we started virtual classes daily.

These virtual classes focused on groundnut at the request of Addakal farm communities. The resource person from ICRISAT discussed with the rural women the good agriculture practices related to land preparation, suitable improved varieties, sowing methods, water requirement, fertilizer and pesticide applications, and harvesting, in the regional language (Telugu) while

15 projecting the generic modules in English. During these sessions the women noted down the important points relevant to them.

Following these virtual classes the trained rural women organized farmers meetings in their respective villages in the evening hours and shared their notes with them. The questions from the farmers were reviewed during the session. They also digitized the content and prepared Microsoft PPT slides in the local language (Telugu). The rural women at the hub developed locally relevant information from the ICRISAT generic learning modules on groundnut by following this framework. Here is a case where there is evidence that ODL methods can lead to more effective localization of generic content.

(2) Use of Videoconferencing as a Learning Support Tool across Multiple Rural Centers Our partner, the MSSRF (see above) leads an India-wide program on satellite-connectivity-based VRC’s (see above). We worked with the MSSRF program to test the usefulness of the VC as a tool in promoting new awareness on crop management issues. The first in the series of videoconferences was in early 2005 with the groundnut farmers, supported by the use of high bandwidth video link provided by the ISRO to the MSSRF.

Farmers of southern Tamilnadu and Pondicherry spread over a distance of over 500 to 600 km distance interacted with experts via the high bandwidth video link available with MSSRF. The VC went on for over 4 hours with questions ranging from suitable varieties to post harvest management. Farmers found it as good as face-to-face interaction with the experts. It also encouraged farmer-to-farmer interaction. It was a new experience for the experts as well. They appreciated the tool as it provided them with a wider reach and better impact. Experts were able to examine the affected specimens displayed by farmers via video and diagnose with a fairly high degree of accuracy. They however admitted that a short training on how to interact via video would facilitate better articulation with their remote clients. This videoconference covered about 100 farmers representing on 25 farmers on an average from each center.

The second VC was organized in mid-2005 for dairy farmers of 30 village clusters of the same districts. This interaction covered animal health and management issues besides feed and fodder issues. Experts represented the International Livestock Research Institute, Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. The interaction lasted for over 5 hours. This VC also addressed over 100 farm families from across Tamilnadu and Pondicherry States in South India.

Employing videoconferencing for facilitating farmer-experts interaction has brought out several additional benefits. The questions and answers recorded during the VC serve as high quality content. These offer excellent opportunities to develop need-based content such as FAQs on groundnut and livestock management that could be immediately deployed for use in ODL. Videoconferencing also facilitated discussion on some serious issues involving water, which is very scarce in the areas covered. For instance, continued engagement of farmers on judicious use of water led to several farmers making modification in cropping preferences. They shifted to less water demanding crops such as maize and pulses from water-intensive paddy cultivation.

16 (3) The Parivatan.net Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL) initiated Parivartan (meaning change) Network Program (www.parivartan.net) . This program involves the establishment of network of RKCs in order to disseminate information and deploy services useful for farming community. The pilot program is being executed in Pune and Ahmednagar districts in Maharashtra State in the western part of India. www.parivrtan.net is an official web portal site for this program and has around 1200 pages of agricultural content in the regional language (Marathi) hosted on it. This content is sourced from various organizations like ICRISAT and other institutions and individuals engaged in knowledge generation. Market related data is also collected from agricultural produce market committees on daily basis for generating market advisories. Experiments in developing agricultural content in various forms like text, audio, video, PowerPoint presentations and animations, FAQs, Interviews have been carried out. Around 110 Microsoft PPT presentations on various agricultural subjects are available online for users to view and download.

An innovative concept of web-based logical gathering of content objects called Knowledge Capsule is used online. Knowledge capsule is a collection of reusable learning objects belonging to specific topics. These capsules consist of objects like text information, articles, animated stories, streamed video, audio clips, web ring and other details.

Parivartan Network web portal been also leading an effort for generation of dynamic content in the form of questions and answers. Queries asked by farmers are answered by practicing experts from various organizations, which in turn lead to rich content developed out of farmers’ real experiences.

Development of Locally Relevant Content

We also conducted experiments for developing location specific content from generic information. The Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd (MKCL) has developed on trial basis a framework for extracting locally relevant content from generic information by using ICT as an interface. The VASAT used ICRISAT research results to develop learning modules in English using methods generally adopted in ODL programs. The MKCL translated VASAT course on coping with drought to Marathi (local language of Maharashtra) and used these in a program to bring awareness on drought among 30000 college students during December 2004- June 2005 in several locations in the western part of the State of Maharashtra. The MKCL experts adopted the content to suit the local milieu and added a voice over in Marathi for greater effect of learning. The learners accessed the modules as off-line CD’s in rural camps organized in scores of locations. This is another example of transformation of generic content into locally relevant modules using ICT.

Summary India’s farming sector needs strong knowledge support in order to stay competent. The existing extension system with its conventional training and capacity building approaches is not able to cater to the diverse needs of the farming sector. Our experience suggests that timely and need- based information support can empower farm families to better livelihoods. Shifting of cropping preferences -from the water-demanding crops to water-saving ones- by some of the farm families can be attributed to the change in behavior pattern brought about due to the process of engagement. Thus, rural knowledge centers can become effective distance learning centers and facilitate the processes that cater to the information needs of the farm families for longer periods. They also can aid in non-formal learning in agriculture and allied areas that involve learning

17 cycles that take longer time periods for completion. Information and communication technologies such as the Internet and videoconferencing have tremendous scope to engage farm families in life long learning. Local adaptation of content by building local capacity can go a long way in promoting distance education in non-formal sector. With the reach and spread of rural knowledge centers all set to increase in the coming months, the scope of RKCs as distance learning centers is far greater for promoting better rural livelihoods. One of the prime concerns of RKCs is their sustainability. The key is the development of public-private partnerships to sustain RKCs who need to generate variety of services to be deployed for the rural communities. It is the blend of a variety of agricultural and non-agricultural services will help make RKCs sustainable as information service providers.

Acknowledgement:

A part of the results reported in this paper were derived from ICRISAT activities on the VASAT project, which is supported by the ICT-KM Program of the CGIAR (www.ictkm.cgiar.org).

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18 Paper 4 Home

Information and Communication technology (ICT) mediated Open Distance Learning (ODL) methods for Agricultural Extension: A case study from a drought prone area of rural south Asia Dileep Kumar Guntuku1, Aruna Sai Kuna2, Sreenath Dixit3, Balaji Venkataraman4

1 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India. Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Near Indroda Circle, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. 2 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India. 3 Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), Santoshnagar, Hyderabad 500 059, Andhra Pradesh, India. 4 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Abstract. Recurrent droughts affect vast areas of South Asia, and are increasingly becoming a cause for concern. Information is the backbone of drought preparedness. In order to mitigate the ill effects of drought, there is an urgent need for sustained information, education and social mobilization efforts to reach vulnerable rural communities. ICT mediated ODL methods are being used to enable extension functionaries to gather, store, retrieve and disseminate a broad range of information needed by farmers, thus transforming them from extension workers into knowledge workers. The emergence of such knowledge workers will result in the realization of the much talked about bottom-up, demand-driven technology generation, assessment, refinement and transfer. In this paper, the authors present and discuss a case study conducted in a highly drought prone area, on how an Internet-connected rural access center (operated by a rural NGO) enabled training of rural youth in resource literacy, which in turn led to improved interactions between rural families and experts online. The study indicates that the ICT mediated ODL methods for rural families can bring a significant impact on extension practices, in drought-prone regions of South Asia. Keywords. ICT, ODL, Information and Communication Technologies, Open and Distance Learning, Agriculture Extension, Agro Advisory Introduction Drought is increasingly becoming a cause for concern in many regions of South Asia, because recurrent droughts often cause large-scale water and food deficits, hunger, famine, exodus of people and animals, diseases, deaths, and many other severe, chronic socio-economic problems. The degree of vulnerability to the impacts of drought varies significantly from one nation to another. Many of the rural communities appear to forget the miseries of one drought season with the onset of good rains; and those miseries usually continue from one drought to the next. This is due to the lack of awareness and non-availability of the relevant information. There is an urgent need for a sustained information, campaign and social mobilization in strategic sectors, especially among the most vulnerable rural communities and their intermediaries to mitigate the effects of drought. Drought preparedness is preferable to relief, and information is the backbone of drought preparedness (UNSO, 2000). The Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) was initiated in 2002 with a view to leveraging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) mediated Open and Distance Learning (ODL) methods to reach drought information to a large section of communities in a short period of time. Its objective is to create demand-driven content that can be localized to suit the rural communities and their intermediaries, to convert the scientific know-how to field-level do-how. VASAT is a strategic coalition of national and international organizations that deals with information, communication and non-formal distance education. The coalition is led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and is jointly implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and leaders among the national agricultural research systems (Balaji, 2004). In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study on the role of information in enhancing awareness on drought issues. This study was conducted under the VASAT project in South India with a rural partner organization.

A profile of the study area The Addakal cluster of villages, a highly drought prone area, is a part of Mahabubnagar district located in Andhra Pradesh (AP), India. It has 37 villages, spread over an area of 19,397 ha; 15% of this area is covered by irrigated land, 60% by rain-fed lands, and the remaining 25% is considered as ‘wasteland.’ The annual rainfall here varies from 391 mm to 542.6 mm. Most of the tube-wells, open wells and tanks in this area are dry. According 2001 census, the population and the literacy rate of this area is 46,380 (Male: 50.57%, Female: 49.43%) and 35% (Male: 66%, Female : 34%), respectively. Over 75% workers are engaged in agriculture, dairy farming and allied activities. High risk associated with low investment capacity of farmers often

19 results in higher rate of out migration, food insecurity and poverty. The main agriculture crops are castor, groundnut, maize, chickpea, pigeonpea, sorghum, pearl millet, paddy and orchard crops. This area consists of 8639 houses, 10 post offices, 998 telephone connections, 1 government hospital, 8 veterinary hospitals (one doctor is available for all the hospitals), 1 government junior college, 9 government high schools, 21 government elementary schools, 1 Anganvaadi Kendras (government baby care center), 10 dairies led by women, 1 library, and 3 banks including Aadarsha Mahila Bank.

Details of the study The Aadarsha Mahila Samaikya (AMS) located in Addakal is a federation of all-women micro-credit societies. It has a membership of 5,225 rural women (AMS records, 2005 data), and has been functional in all the 37 villages since 1994. AMS accepted VASAT’s invitation to partner a pilot study on the use of information to enhance drought preparedness. The partners in the study have decided to apply a hub-and-spokes model for facilitating information flow into the study area. This model has already been described (Balaji 2000, Punthambekar 2004, Dileepkumar 2005). The hub is generally a set up with reasonable computing facility and Internet access. This is where the value addition to generic information derived from the networks is carried out, and location-specific information is generated. Trained individuals with college-level education operate the hub. Rural access points are linked to this hub by telephone. Volunteers at the rural access points receive location-specific information from the hub and deliver it to rural families in a variety of ways (blackboards, public speakers etc). The hub for VASAT activities is hosted in the AMS building (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Aadarsha Welfare Society building (inset photo – VSAT dish) We selected three villages: Jaanampeta, Vemula and Kommireddypalli located within a radius of 5 km from central hub, as pilot for rural access points. These are the village information centers (VIC), which serve as spokes to the central hub. Existing village community buildings were used for organizing the activities of VASAT in these villages. The Village Network Assistants (VNA) of Aadarsha Welfare Society acted as information collectors for the project. A project of this kind cannot succeed unless the community has a sense of ownership and participation right from the beginning. The bottom-up approach involved local volunteers collecting information from different sources, such as the nearby markets, government departments and traders. Blackboards were put up outside the VIC to disseminate the information. At the initial stages, no computers were provided. With the help of the AMS, a participatory rural communication appraisal was organized, and the results are presented diagrammatically in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Information Flow and Linkages in Addakal Mandal (AP, India) as perceived by Rural Women and Men (May 2003)

20 From this figure, it emerges that most of the information needs of typical rural residents are met by approaching family members, neighbors or friends (who themselves are not well informed in most cases). At a secondary level, the farm input suppliers; local shops and markets act as important and credible sources of information. Technical information on agriculture, available with a range of agencies is not easy to access by most rural families. This compounds the problem of information poverty in particular. As a first step, we decided to strengthen the access to crop-related information, which is the core of a drought information system.

Process of Information Empowerment The state Agricultural Officer (AO) is a pivot in the agricultural extension system and acts like a mediator between the farmers and the experts. It is a difficult task for an individual to provide solutions to the 37 villages at the same time. After several interactions in the three villages, we observed that the farming communities in these villages were not able to access timely information for their farm related problems. VASAT introduced a Question and Answer (Q & A) service in the VICs and the hub acted as a central station for these activities. The VICs are open to everyone, irrespective of age, sex, religion, caste and level of literacy. The VNAs and the local volunteers distributed pamphlets in Telugu (local language) about the availability of agro advisory service at the VIC. No predefined methodology was available to start this activity. We agreed to provide training and traveling allowances to two Para Extension Workers (PEW) of AMS for operating this service. ICRISAT experts agreed to answer (provide solutions to a farm problem) the questions raised by the farmers in distance mode. VASAT technical experts configured a web-enabled Content Management System (CMS- web based interface enables the distant communication and education between farmers and ICRISAT scientific community). VASAT received the first set of questions (transliterated from Telugu to English) on 1 October 2004 and provided answers on 7 October 2004 (Table 1). The data revealed that the questions were not clear and the ICRISAT experts were forced to seek several clarifications from the PEWs over phone for problem diagnosis. Consequently the whole process was delayed. After analyzing these details, the project team decided to train the PEWs and the VNAs on agro advisory in a distant mode. Junior experts (who have both IT skills and agricultural knowledge) available with VASAT agreed to spend three days in the villages for providing the informal training on agro-advisory in distant mode. The details of the training program conducted for three days (19 October to 21 October 2004) are as follows: Day One: The junior experts advised the PEWs and the VNAs to observe the process of collecting questions from the farmers; sending them to subject experts; and receiving answers from them within 24 hours. In this process, the subject experts also asked half a dozen questions (on the stage of the crop, prior crop, kind of problem, the period of the plant’s sickness) before receiving a question from the farmers. They explained to the PEWs and the VNAs how this information helped experts to understand the problem. Day Two: On the second day, the junior experts requested the PEWs and the VNAs to repeat the procedure of Day One. They made critical observations on the activities of the PEWs and the VNAs. At the end of the day, they shared those observations with the PEWs and the VNAs with the help of a participatory appraisal.

Day three: The PEWs and VNAs repeated the activity (i.e., carried out on day one and day two) under the supervision of junior experts. Table 2: Analysis of the (questions) data collected during ICT mediated agro advisory process. Date No of Repeated New Un- Date of Process questions questions questions answered answers duration received provided 1 October 8 3 - 0 7 October 6 days 2 October 6 4 - 0 7 October 6 days 14 October 17 14 3 0 18 October 4 days After training 24 October 2 0 2 0 24 October 8 hours 4 November 17 12 5 0 5 November 31 hours 14 November 24 16 8 0 15 November 26 hours *After November VASAT didn’t receive any new questions until February, as rainfed crop season ends by November.

21 Observations • Most of the farmers were not able to read and write, they were not aware of the details a subject expert would need to diagnose a problem. • It was observed, 80% of the questions were related to pest and disease problems (sometimes it reached 100%), 20% were related to information about locally suitable varieties, info of the seed selling offices, water scarcity issues etc. • The PEWs and the VNAs redirected the same questions to the subject experts. For example: Before training: ICRISAT subject experts received a question ‘I observe flower dropping in my castor field, please advice me’ from Sivaramulu, 32 years old, resident of Jaanampeta village. Advice of ICRISAT subject experts: Need adequate information to understand the problem. Icrisat subject experts expected more details to diagnose the problem before providing a solution, because of their concern for reliability. Most of the ICRISAT subject experts were not familiar with local terms (localization is a serious issue in agricultural extension, because local names vary from one location to another even within a province. Experts often used scientific names in their discussions). After training: The same question was repeated - ‘In the 3- month old castor crop in my 4- acres land, I have observed two kinds of flowers, red and green; only the red ones turned in to fruit and the green flowers dropped down, please advice me’ from Shantamma, 35 years old, resident of Vemula. Advice of ICRISAT experts: Green flowers are male flowers, after fertilization male flowers drop down, and the red female flowers turn into fruit. This is natural and there is no need for taking up any measure. • After the training program, the confidence level of the PEWs and the VNAs has increased and farm communities have started receiving solutions within 48 hours. • The farm community has expressed satisfaction with the service available at the VIC. Satyanarayana Reddy, 45 years old literate but poorly informed farmer, resident of Jaanampeta village, says ‘earlier we used to take the advice from the pesticide shop dealers on random mixing of the pesticides. Now with the help of this service we are able to figure out the accurate dosage. It saves money.’ Chandrakala, 30 years old, a resident of Kommireddypalli village, says ‘we are happy with the service, I brought quinolphos for a pest problem in my field, and it worked. Earlier, I used to buy mono (monocrotophos), acephate on the advice of pesticide dealer for any problem in my field. I used to get mixed results’ • There are ongoing programs by VASAT, on IT literacy, literacy training on agriculture, livestock issues, coping with drought and water scarcity issues in these pilot villages. AMS-VASAT jointly selects these individuals on the basis of their educational qualification (most of the participants are school dropouts who have secondary level education) and involvement in the farm activities. These trained villagers act like mediators between the farmers and the experts. It was observed that the farmers who had irrigation facility were growing the paddy even in drought conditions. After the training program on ‘coping with drought’ (content developed on both in Telugu and English) farmers have expressed their willingness to change their cropping patterns to less water requiring crops such as maize, castor, chickpea, pigeonpea, pearlmillet etc.

Lessons Learnt • There is a need to promote community-based para-extension workers to help rural families combat drought more effectively. • ICT mediated extension education alone cannot bring changes in the existing agricultural extension system, human factors also play a critical role in technology adoption. • There is a need of intelligent intermediaries, who are able to adopt new technological innovation for bringing considerable changes in the current agriculture extension system for drought preparedness. • These knowledge workers act like torchbearers in these drought prone areas. • ICT4D projects cannot succeed unless the community has a sense of ownership and participation right from the beginning.

22 In lieu of a Conclusion Right information given at an appropriate time can empower the poor rural communities that struggle to live amidst recurrent droughts. But the process of arriving at what information is ‘right’ and when it needs to be delivered to the communities are very important. It is also necessary to understand how the individuals are seeking information, processing it and disseminate the same to their fellow members in their communities. The present study reinforces the necessity of trained knowledge workers in the villages to bridge the knowledge gap between research laboratories and farms. The study also shows that it is possible to build the capacity of the local women and youth to act as para-extension workers who can effectively mediate between experts and their farm communities.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank DA-IICT, CRIDA, ICRISAT and AMS for providing us an opportunity to carry out this study. We would like to acknowledge the technical guidance from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and financial support from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Knowledge Management (KM) program of Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). We greatly value the encouragement and incomparable affection from the members of the rural communities of Jaanampeta, Kommireddypalli and Vemula during this study.

References Balaji, V., K. G. Rajamohan, R. Rajasekara Pandy, and S. Senthilkumaran. 2000. Towards a Knowledge System for Sustainable Food Security: The information village experiment in Pondicherry. On the Internet, Fall/Winter pp. 32-37. Available at http://www.isoc.org/oti/articles/0401/balaji.html. Accessed 8 June 2006. Balaji, V. 2004. ICT, Non-formal learning as factors influencing extension processes: a case study from rural South India. Available at ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. Dileepkumar, G. 2005. ICT4D hub & spokes system for rural communities in Addakal. Available at ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. Directorate of Census Operations, Census of India 2001, Volume 2, Andhra Pradesh, Manager of Publication, Delhi, India. Punthambekar, A. 2004. MSSRF’s Information Village Research project, Pondicherry. Available at http://www.iiitb.ac.in/ICTforD/MSSRF%20final.pdf Accessed 9 June 2006. UNSO. 2000. Report on the status of drought preparedness and mitigation in Sub Saharan Africa. Available at http://www.undp.org/seed/unso/concepts&programs/pub-htm/dpm-1.pdf Accessed 29 March 2006.

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23 Paper 5 Home

SCORM Compliant Web-Based Content Management Tool for Extending Viable Information to Rural Community in an Affordable Way

Dr. V. Balaji International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, India and Anant Arora , Anuj Jain , Gaurav Goyal , Gauravi Dubey , Saurabh Singh Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

Abstract

In the present agricultural scenario, there are two levels at which information is handled. At one level are the researchers and scientists who generate information and at the other, are the rural people who apply it. The most critical problem pertaining to this information flow (intra/inter level) is the availability of comprehensible information and that of information interoperability and reusability. The information developed by the scientific community is abstruse and incomprehensible for the rural people and this introduces a sense of divide between the two. The actors involved in this digital information flow are also not regular computer users (in some cases, they are not even literates and are non-conversant in English, in which most of the literature is available), which makes it even harder to overcome. This paper proposes a web-based multilinguistic tool for extending viable and localized information to rural community in an affordable way.

This paper is based on the research work done at ICRISAT [2] (International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad) under its VASAT [3], Virtual Academy for Semi- Arid Tropics, initiative.

I. INTRODUCTION

There presently is an information divide between the scientific community that includes the people who do all research and actually are information creators or generators, and the agrarian communities who apply this information in the fields. It is for bridging this particular divide that the farm extension workers come in. These are the people (can be literate or semi-literate farmer/person) who have required amount of agriculture knowledge and the minimal required computer skill (like booting and browsing etc). The content usually created is full of scientific terms, definitions and analysis. But what a farmer requires is something that, in a very simple and localized manner, gives him the required knowledge.

II. WEB-BASED CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOL

This section describes the features and functionalities of the tool, in context of the requirements mentioned above.

24 A. Information Workflow

The information flow requires an interface between the high-level knowledge workers and extension workers. As is always the case, the information generated by the researchers is abstruse and incomprehensible from farmer’s point of view. This information in the form of SCORM version1.2 [1] -compliant objects is stored in the central repository, which acts as the database. The farm extension workers can then access collection of objects, customize them (according to local preferences) using our tool and pass it over to farm families, who then acquire the required knowledge. Moreover, the content generated at both levels is sharable, reusable and interoperable (only for SCORM compliant objects). The functionalities in our system are divided into three categories: localization of information, generation of SCORM compliant objects, and defining pedagogy (creation of instruction).

B. Localization of Information

Farm families, through extension workers, can access the necessary nformation. The information thus obtained can be customized using our tool. The customizing tool gives user the power of extracting content from a variety of documents that are not only available in our system but elsewhere, with the help of drag-drop multilingual editor. Any content in any local language can be added. New content generated, can be locally used and can also be uploaded onto the repository (so that it can be shared and reused). The unique property of this tool is that it gives the users power of localizing information, in a very simple (just drag-drop) way, with minimum required skills. The user only deals with simple text and images, without having the knowledge of any of the scripting or markup languages. Most of the processing required is done on the server. All that is required at the client side is the internet connection and the browser. This functionality fulfills the need of contextualization “in an affordable way”, which is an imperative issue.

C. Generation of SCORM compliant objects

The Content Management Tool also gives the users option of creating SCORM version 1.2 [1] compliant objects. These objects can be html pages, text files, animations, images or a group of these objects. Here the user defines the level of granularity. The lowest level reusable objects are called assets and group of assets make up an SCO (Sharable Content object). These SCOs are interoperable and reusable and mainly constitutes the flow of information amongst the peers. For this, user has to fill the required tags [1],[3] ranging from minimally required to all, as defined by the ADL community. This ensures the sharability and reusability of information in the horizontal direction. Here also the interface provided is built keeping in mind that the users are not regular computer users. The implementation complexity is hidden from the users of the system, thus they need not have any technical background (like having knowledge of XML or other software skills).

D. Defining Pedagogy

This functionality gives users the option of defining an instruction (course/module/tutorial) online. The instruction can be created with the help of objects available in the repository or by new user defined objects. The Tool also has an inbuilt player, which can be used for playing the instruction. User can thus, online generate the instruction and can play it as a course. The SCORM compliant course/module created through the system can be downloaded and played on any other SCORM

25 compliant LMS or player, without any changes. This fulfills our requirement of interoperability and reusability at the instructional level.

III. CONCLUSIONS

At present, the most critical problem concerning information flow in agriculture scenario is that of availability of comprehensible (localized) information and of content compatibility (sharability, reusability and interoperability). This paper presents a Web-based Multilingual Content Management Tool specifically designed for keeping these two problems and the target users (farm ext. workers and agricultural scientists) at focus. Since, the content generated by the system is in accordance with SCORM specifications [1] as well as sequencing and navigation capabilities [7], the content can run on different SCORM Compliant Learning Management Systems. Presently the system has minimal functions, catering mainly to needs of rural and the agricultural domain. But the system is incorporated and hence can be made usable for other domains too.

REFERENCES

[1] ADL Technical Team, “Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Version 1.2”, http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm

[2] ICRISAT, International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropic,http://www.icrisat.org.

[3] VASAT, Virtual Academy for Semi-Arid Tropic, http://vasat.org

[4] ICRISAT, “Legume Pod Borer”, www.vusat.org/learning/agri/Pigeonpea_htm/est/Attack%20Flower%20& %20%20Buds/legumepodborer.htm

[5] IMS Global Learning Consortium, “Developing Tools and Content” http://www.imsglobal.org/develop.cfm

[6] Jin-Tan David, Yang Chun-Yen Tsai, “An Implementation of SCORMcompliant Learning Content Management System - Content Repository Management System” http://csdl.computer.org/ comp/proceedings/icalt/2003/1967/00/19670453.pdf

[7] ADL Technical Team, SCORM Sequencing and Navigation, Version 1.3.1, July 2004

26 Paper 6 Home

AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WITH INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) MEDIATED OPEN DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) METHODS: A CASE STUDY FROM RURAL SOUTH INDIA

G. Dileepkumar, Sreenath Dixit, and V. Balaji*

Mr. Dileepkumar Guntuku Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT) Near Indroda Circle, Gandhinagar - 382 009, Gujarat, India. [email protected]

Dr. Sreenath Dixit Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) Santoshnagar, Hyderabad – 500 059 [email protected]

Dr. Balaji Venkataraman International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) Knowledge Management and Sharing, ICRISAT, Patancheru – 502 324, India. [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Recurrent droughts affect vast areas of South Asia, and are increasingly becoming a cause for concern. Information is the backbone of drought preparedness. In order to mitigate the ill effects of drought, there is an urgent need for sustained information, education and social mobilization efforts to reach vulnerable rural communities.

ICT mediated ODL methods are being used to enable extension functionaries to gather, store, retrieve and disseminate a broad range of information needed by farmers, thus transforming them from extension workers into knowledge workers. The emergence of such knowledge workers will result in the realization of the much talked about bottom-up, demand-driven technology generation, assessment, refinement and transfer.

In this paper, the authors present and discuss a case study conducted in a highly drought prone area, during the period of August 2004 to February 2005, on how an Internet-connected rural access center (operated by a rural NGO) enabled training of rural youth in resource literacy, which in turn led to improved interactions between rural families and experts online. The study indicates that the ICT mediated ODL methods for rural families can bring a significant impact on extension practices, in drought-prone regions of South Asia.

INTRODUCTION

Drought is increasingly becoming a cause for concern in many regions of South Asia, because recurrent droughts often cause large-scale water and food deficits, hunger, famine, exodus of people and animals, diseases, deaths, and many other severe, chronic socio-economic problems. The degree of vulnerability to the impacts of drought varies significantly from one nation to another. Many of the rural communities appear to forget the miseries of one drought season with

27 the onset of good rains; and those miseries usually continue from one drought to the next. This is due to the lack of awareness and non-availability of the relevant information. There is an urgent need for a sustained information, campaign and social mobilization in strategic sectors, especially among the most vulnerable rural communities and their intermediaries to mitigate the effects of drought. Drought preparedness is preferable to relief, and information is the backbone of drought preparedness (UNSO, 2000).

The Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) was initiated in 2002 with a view to leveraging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) mediated Open and Distance Learning (ODL) methods to reach drought information to a large section of communities in a short period of time. Its objective is to create demand-driven content that can be localized to suit the rural communities and their intermediaries, to convert the scientific know-how to field-level do- how. VASAT is a strategic coalition of national and international organizations that deals with information, communication and non-formal distance education. The coalition is led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and is jointly implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and leaders among the national agricultural research systems (Balaji, 2004). In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study on the role of information in enhancing awareness on drought issues. This study was conducted under the VASAT project in South India with a rural partner organization.

A PROFILE OF THE STUDY AREA

The Addakal cluster of villages, a highly drought prone area, is a part of Mahabubnagar district located in Andhra Pradesh (AP), India. It has 37 villages, spread over an area of 19,397 ha; 15% of this area is covered by irrigated land, 60% by rain-fed lands, and the remaining 25% is considered as ‘wasteland.’ The annual rainfall here varies from 391 mm to 542.6 mm. Most of the tube-wells, open wells and tanks in this area are dry. The literacy rate is 35%. Over 75% workers are engaged in agricultural, dairy farming and allied activities. High risk associated with low investment capacity of farmers often results in higher rate of out migration, food insecurity and poverty (Table 1).

Table 1 : Profile of Addakal

Total population 46380 (Male : 50.57 %, Female : 49.43 %) Total number of houses 8639 houses Literacy rate 35 % (Male : 66 %, Female : 34 %) Government hospital 1 Veterinary hospitals 8 (one doctor is available for all the hospitals) Post Offices 10 Telephone Connections 998 Government Junior College 1 Government High Schools 9 Government elementary schools 21 Anganvaadi Kendras 1 (Governement baby care center) Dairies led by women 10 Library 1 Banks 2 (Sangameswara graameena bank (moosapet) and 1 Aadarsha Mahila Bank

(Source: Population census data 2001)

The Aadarsha Welfare Society (AWS) located in Addakal is a federation of all-women micro- credit societies. It has a membership of 5,225 rural women (AWS records, 2005 data), and has been functional in all the 37 villages since 1994. AWS accepted VASAT’s invitation to partner a pilot study on the use of information to enhance drought preparedness.

The partners in the study have decided to apply a hub-and-spokes model for facilitating information flow into the study area. This model has already been described (Balaji 2000, Punthambekar 2004, Dileepkumar 2005). The hub is generally a set up with reasonable computing facility and Internet access. This is where the value addition to generic information derived from the networks is carried out, and location-specific information is generated. Trained individuals with college-level education operate the hub. Rural access points are linked to this hub by telephone. Volunteers at the rural access points receive location-specific information from the hub and deliver it to rural families in a variety of ways (blackboards, public speakers etc). The hub for VASAT activities is hosted in the AWS building (Figure 1).

Fig 1: Aadarsha Welfare Society building (inset photo – VSAT dish)

We selected three villages: Jaanampeta, Vemula and Kommireddypalli located within a radius of 5 km in radius from central hub, as pilot for rural access points. These are the village information centers (VIC), which serve as spokes to the central hub. Existing village community buildings were used for organizing the activities of VASAT in these villages. The Village Network Assistants (VNA) of Aadarsha Welfare Society acted as information collectors for the project. A project of this kind cannot succeed unless the community has a sense of ownership and participation right from the beginning. The bottom-up approach involved local volunteers collecting information from different sources, such as the nearby markets, government departments and traders. Blackboards were put up outside the VIC to disseminate the information. At the initial stages, no computers were provided. With the help of the AWS, a participatory rural communication appraisal was organized, and the results are presented diagrammatically in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Information Flow and Linkages in Addakal Mandal (AP, India) as perceived by Rural Women and Men (May 2003)

From this figure, it emerges that most of the information needs of typical rural residents are met by approaching family members, neighbors or friends (who themselves are not well informed in most cases). At a secondary level, the farm input suppliers; local shops and markets act as important and credible sources of information. Technical information on agriculture, available with a range of agencies is not easy to access by most rural families. This compounds the problem of information poverty in particular. As a first step, we decided to strengthen the access to crop-related information, which is the core of a drought information system.

PROCESS OF INFORMATION EMPOWERMENT

The state Agricultural Officer (AO) is a pivot in the agricultural extension system and acts like a mediator between the farmers and the experts. It is a difficult task for an individual to provide solutions to the 37 villages at the same time. After several interactions in the three villages, we observed that the farming communities in these villages were not able to access timely information for their farm related problems. VASAT introduced a Question and Answer (Q & A) service in the VICs and the hub acted as a central station for these activities. The VICs are open to everyone, irrespective of age, sex, religion, caste and level of literacy. The VNAs and the local volunteers distributed pamphlets in Telugu (local language) about the availability of agro advisory service at the VIC. No predefined methodology was available to start this activity. We agreed to provide training and traveling allowances to two Para Extension Workers (PEW) of AWS for operating this service. ICRISAT experts agreed to answer (provide solutions to a farm problem) the questions raised by the farmers in distance mode. VASAT technical experts configured a web-enabled Content Management System (CMS)i, which acted like an information communication tool between the ICRISAT experts and PEWs.

VASAT received the first set of questions (transliterated from Telugu to English) on 1 October 2004 and provided answers on 7 October 2004 (Table 1). The data revealed that the questions were not clear and the ICRISAT experts were forced to seek several clarifications from the PEWs over phone for problem diagnosis. Consequently the whole process was delayed. After analyzing these details, the project team decided to train the PEWs and the VNAs on agro advisory in a distant mode. Junior experts (who have both IT skills and agricultural knowledge) available with VASAT agreed to spend three days in the villages for providing the informal training on agro-advisory in distant mode. The details of the training program conducted for three days (19 October to 21 October 2004) are as follows:

Day One: The junior experts advised the PEWs and the VNAs to observe the process of collecting questions from the farmers; sending them to subject experts; and receiving answers from them within 24 hours. In this process, the subject experts also asked half a dozen questions (on the stage of the crop, prior crop, kind of problem, the period of the plant’s sickness) before receiving a question from the farmers. They explained to the PEWs and the VNAs how this information helped experts to understand the problem.

Day Two: On the second day, the junior experts requested the PEWs and the VNAs to repeat the procedure of Day One. They made critical observations on the activities of the PEWs and the VNAs. At the end of the day, they shared those observations with the PEWs and the VNAs with the help of a participatory appraisal.

Day three: The PEWs and VNAs repeated the activity (i.e., carried out on day one and day two) under the supervision of junior experts.

OBSERVATIONS

• Most of the farmers were not able to read and write, they were not aware of the details a subject expert would need to diagnose a problem.

30 • It was observed, 80% of the questions were related to pest and disease problems (sometimes it reached 100%), 20% were related to information about locally suitable varieties, info of the seed selling offices, water scarcity issues etc. • The PEWs and the VNAs redirected the same questions to the subject experts.

For example:

Before training: ICRISAT subject experts received a question ‘I observe flower dropping in my castor field, please advice me’ from Sivaramulu, 32 years old, resident of Jaanampeta village.

Advice of ICRISAT subject experts: Need adequate information to understand the problem.

1. Icrisat subject experts expected more details to daignose the problem before providing a solution, because of their concern for reliability. 2. Most of the ICRISAT subject experts were not familiar with local terms (localization is a serious issue in agricultural extension, because local names vary from one location to another even within a province. Experts often used scientific names in their discussions).

After training: The same question was repeated - ‘In the 3- month old castor crop in my 4- acres land, I have observed two kinds of flowers, red and green; only the red ones turned in to fruit and the green flowers dropped down, please advice me’ from Shantamma, 35 years old, resident of Vemula.

Advice of ICRISAT experts: Green flowers are male flowers, after fertilization male flowers drop down, and the red female flowers turn into fruit. This is natural and there is no need for taking up any measure.

• After the training program, the confidence level of the PEWs and the VNAs has increased and farm communities have started receiving solutions within 48 hours. • The farm community has expressed satisfaction with the service available at the VIC. Satyanarayana Reddy, 45 years old literate but poorly informed farmer, resident of Jaanampeta village, says ‘earlier we used to take the advice from the pesticide shop dealers on random mixing of the pesticides. Now with the help of this service we are able to figure out the accurate dosage. It saves money.’ Chandrakala, 30 years old, a resident of Kommireddypalli village, says ‘we are happy with the service, I brought quinolphos for a pest problem in my field, and it worked. Earlier, I used to buy mono (monocrotophos), acephate on the advice of pesticide dealer for any problem in my field. I used to get mixed results’

LESSONS LEARNT

There is a need to promote community-based para-extension workers to help rural families combat drought more effectively. ICT mediated extension education alone cannot bring changes in the existing agricultural extension system. Human factors also play a critical role in technology adoption. There is a need of intelligent intermediaries, who are able to adopt new technological innovation for bringing considerable changes in the current agriculture extension system for drought preparedness. These knowledge workers act like torchbearers in these drought prone areas. ICT4D projects cannot succeed unless the community has a sense of ownership and participation right from the beginning.

31 IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION

There are ongoing programs by VASAT, on IT literacy, literacy training on agriculture, livestock issues, coping with drought and water scarcity issues in these pilot villages. AWS-VASAT jointly selects these individuals on the basis of their educational qualification (most of the participants are school dropouts who have secondary level education) and involvement in the farm activities. These trained villagers act like mediators between the farmers and the experts. It was observed that the farmers who had irrigation facility were growing the paddy even in drought conditions. After the training program on ‘coping with drought’ (content developed on both in Telugu and English) farmers have expressed their willingness to change their cropping patterns to less water requiring crops such as maize, castor, chickpea, pigeonpea, pearlmillet etc.

Right information given at an appropriate time can empower the poor rural communities that struggle to live amidst recurrent droughts. But the process of arriving at what information is ‘right’ and when it needs to be delivered to the communities are very important. It is also necessary to understand how the individuals are seeking information, processing it and disseminate the same to their fellow members in their communities. The present study reinforces the necessity of trained knowledge workers in the villages to bridge the knowledge gap between research laboratories and farms. The study also shows that it is possible to build the capacity of the local women and youth to act as para-extension workers who can effectively mediate between experts and their farm communities.

Table 2: Analysis of the (questions) data collected during ICT mediated agro advisory process.

No. of Date of Repeated New Un- Process questions answers Date questions questions answered duration received provided 1st October 8 3 - 0 7th October 6 days 2nd October 6 4 - 0 7th October 6 days 14th October 17 14 3 0 18th October 4 days After training 24th October 2 0 2 0 24th October 8 hours 4th November 17 12 5 0 5th November 31 hours 14th November 24 16 8 0 15th November 26 hours

*After November VASAT didn’t receive any new questions until February, as rainfed crop season ends by November. Note: During this period answers were provided on ICRISAT mandatory crops only: chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, castor, sorghum and pearl millet. The future plan is to provide advisory on all the cultivated crops of this region that include paddy, cotton, vegetable crops and fruit crops; to develop demand driven generic content on more drought related issues.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank DA-IICT, CRIDA, ICRISAT and AWS for providing us an opportunity to carry out this study. We would like to acknowledge the technical guidance from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and financial support from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Knowledge Management (KM) program of Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). We greatly value the encouragement and incomparable affection from the members of the rural communities of Jaanampeta, Kommireddypalli and Vemula during this study.

32 REFERENCES

Balaji, V., Rajamohan, K. G., Rajasekara Pandy, R., & Senthilkumaran, S. (2000). Towards a Knowledge System for Sustainable Food Security: The information village experiment in Pondicherry On the Internet, Fall/Winter pp. 32-37. Retrieved March 29, 2005 from http://www.isoc.org/oti/articles/0401/balaji.html

Balaji, V. (2004). ICT, Non-formal learning as factors influencing extension processes: a case study from rural South India, ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. Unpublished.

Dileepkumar, G. (2005). ICT4D hub & spokes system for rural communities in Addakal, DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India. unpublished

Directorate of Census Operations, Census of India 2001, Volume 2, Andhra Pradesh, Manager of Publication, Delhi, India.

Punthambekar, A. (2004). MSSRF’s Information Village Research project, Pondicherry. Retrieved March 29, 2005 from Indian Institute of Information Technology, Banglore Website: http://www.iiitb.ac.in/ICTforD/MSSRF%20final.pdf

UNSO (2000). Report on the status of drought preparedness and mitigation in Sub Saharan Africa. Retrieved March 29, 2005 from http://www.undp.org/seed/unso/concepts&programs/pub- htm/dpm-1.pdf

END NOTES

i Content Management System

Web enabled Content Management System provides a virtual kind of school environment. It tracks the each and every activity of the users, which in turn is useful to assess their performance. This provides a distance learning methodology to educate the selected rural individuals on drought, agriculture and livestock issues with the help of innovative course modules developed on the basis of analyzed local needs.