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Published online 22 October 2007 | Nature 449, 964-966 (2007) | doi:10.1038/449964a
News Feature
From wheat to web: Children of the revolution
M. S. Swaminathan transformed agriculture in India in the 1960s. Now Daemon Fairless finds him at the heart of another high-tech scheme to help the rural poor.
Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan has trouble making his way across a crowded conference room, not because, at 82, he walks with a slight stoop and an even slighter shuffle, but because he is intercepted at every step by a handshake and a request for a snapshot and an autograph. It is the kind of adulation normally reserved for Bollywood celebrities, not plant geneticists.
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It is very exciting to read the efforts taken by the Indian Government and the MSSRF towards providing agriculture-, health- and environment-related information to folks in rural India through the internet. The inability of some such programs to reach out to the rural population has been cited as an important reason for their failure. I wonder if the author could comment on the role played by illiteracy amongst the rural population in impeding the dissemination of information? Is it even worth factoring this aspect into this equation? Quite naively, it seems to me that an improvement in literacy rate would reduce the dependence on the "local problem solvers" for the spread of information. Shrikant R Bharadwaj PhD Post-doctoral fellow, Indiana University Bloomington
This is in response to whether illiteracy in rural population impedes dissemination of information. The rural farmer is functionally quite literate. Due to language varieties and Indian traditions, the society is more comfortable using oral and visual media. Unlike the n-Logue and similar approaches of disseminating information mainly through Kiosks, we in Kerala run a different multi-modal information delivery model under the KISSAN-Kerala project (visit www.kissankerala.net) developed and serviced by our Institute (IIITM-K: Visit: www.iiitmk.ac.in) with Kerala Agricultural University and supported by the Government's Agriculture Department. This model is centered on the integrated management of three modes of information delivery and feedback: (i) a central bilingual portal with support for both generic and dynamic knowledge and an advanced query management: (ii) a popular weekly TV serial Krishideepam for current awareness on the farm, market, weather, practices and programs front; and (iii) a toll-free call center for supporting phone based queries from farmers. The system is supported by relevant officials, experts and scientists from different organizations. Any agricultural organization in the state may reach out information on their services to farmers. Farmers also get the much needed dynamic support and able to address their ground level problems through the responsive call-center vectored direction of their needs to concerned agricultural agencies for necessary action. This project has been successfully serving Kerala farmers and those interested in Kerala agriculture anywhere for the past four years. To the KISSAN-Kerala information serices, we are adding two more portals - Virtual University fo Agricultural Trade (for continuous education)and E-Krishi (for facilitation of small and unorganized farms trading their produce). Another model of reaching out through a feedback driven assistance for farmers through SMS is the A-AQUA program of IIT Mumbai. K.R. Srivathsan, Director - IIITM-K
A ITU study on Vietnam brings out literacy as an important determinant of accessing ICT services as an intended act of the members of the target community. The most commendable efforts reported here is a mediated access to ICT to initiate the rural poor to the power of information. These initiatives have to graduate finally to unmediated access by the people. Only literacy can achieve that.