Answer:

In the context of agriculture, the potential of e-technology can be assessed broadly under two heads: as a tool for direct contribution to agricultural productivity; and as an indirect tool for empowering farmers to take informed and quality decisions which will have positive impact on the way agriculture and allied activities are conducted.

♤ Precision farming, popular in developed countries, extensively uses IT to make direct contribution to agricultural productivity.

♤ The techniques of remote sensing using satellite technologies, geographical information systems, agronomy and soil sciences are used to increase the agricultural output. This approach is capital intensive and useful where large tracts of land are involved. Consequently it is more suitable for farming taken up on corporate lines.

♤ The indirect benefits of IT in empowering Indian farmer are significant and remains to be exploited.

♤ The Indian farmer urgently requires timely and reliable sources of information inputs for taking decisions. At present, the farmer depends on trickling down of decision inputs from conventional sources which are slow and unreliable.

♤ The changing environment faced by Indian farmers makes information not merely useful, but necessary to remain competitive.

Various programmes have been initiated in this regard such as ITC e-choupal, Rice knowledge management portal, Village knowledge centres, Village resource centres, e- krishi, Mahindra Kisan Mitra etc.

Some of the major constraints in the implementation of e-technology in agriculture in India are:

♤ Duplication of efforts: It is observed that some initiatives have already been made to provide IT based services to rural community. However, duplication of efforts are witnessed as most of the services revolve around limited subjects.

♤ Power Supply: In most of the rural India, power supply is not available for long hours. This will reduce the usefulness of the intended services.

♤ Connectivity: Despite the phenomenal progress made in the recent years, the connectivity to rural areas still requires to be improved. Reliable connectivity is a prerequisite for a successful penetration of IT into rural areas.

♤ Bandwidth: Even in areas where telephone and other communication services exist, the available bandwidth is a major constraint. Since internet based rural services require substantial use of graphics, low bandwidth is one of the major limitations.

♤ Restrictions: government’s map restriction policies often threaten to stifle the optimal utilisation of the tools of remote sensing and geographical information systems.

♤ Lack of awareness and education: The majority of farmer community is unaware of the benefits of e-technology. The present technologies are not user-friendly. The success of e-technology depends on the ease with which rural population can use the content.

♤ Local languages: Regional language fonts and mechanisms for synchronisation of the content provide a challenge that needs to be met with careful planning.

Rapid changes in the field of information technology make it possible to develop and disseminate required electronic services to rural India. The existing bottlenecks in undertaking the tasks need to be addressed immediately. A national strategy needs to be drawn for spearheading IT penetration to rural India.