Prof Jayanta Chatterjee, IME Dept., IIT- Kanpur Prof Harish Karnick, CSE Dept., IIT- Kanpur

Objective Create an electronic exchange for “Knowledge of farm practices, accurate information for optimizing operations, pricing information that enables lower input prices and higher remuneration for outputs”.

Objective (continued) We’ll facilitate this aim by digitally enabling the village mandis, town mandis, farmers, small and big traders, corporate buyers to connect and transact with each other on a frictionless platform. This e-platform will integrate telephony, web, interactive FM, TV and other media.

Status 1 Many private initiatives between to 14 government sites for agriculture: DACNET AGMARKNET VISTARNET NADAMS HORTNET AGRISNET

But a large number of electronic exchanges, web sites for agro-commodities even hybrid click and brick agro-commodity exchanges have failed and many are barely surviving. Status 2

Dispersed information spread horizontally Not easy to pull together a solution Quite different from a real world market place Status 3

The Digital Mandi project The Digital Mandi project attempts to bridge the form & content of information and communication so that the targeted agro-communities find the platform convenient and usable. Our action research will accelerate the e-adoption in a complex social network.

The targets a) Create a scalable multimedia portal architecture that integrates voice, web, TV, radio. b) Focus on Uttar Pradesh and on “Pulses” and “Sugar” in Phase I. Both are major crops of this area. The national research institutions for these commodities are close to us. c) Adopt user-driven processes and “Constructionist” methods to develop the service.

Current activities 1

 We continuously test the relevancy of the content and its depiction for the farmers and small traders by regularly interacting with focus groups.  We have implemented iconic/universal symbol/text-to-speech type open interfaces for every activity on our site. Current activities 2

Current activities 3 Pull and push type bidirectional customized information for subscribers according to their preference. National and international updates and significant alarms/updates through SMS/voice mail/ .

A voic system using IVR/CTI based store, forward, broadcast, copy and other facilities is created. All interface are in Hindi. The web based and voice based systems are integrated. Current activities 4

Hosting facility and transaction back ends for different Mandis and Samitis. To be done 1

Civil engineering and environmental engineering at IITK have a wealth of research databases/GIS based insights and water management strategies for Uttar Pradesh. This will be accessible through the Digital Mand. To be done 2

In phase II we’ll also implement a proof of concept for an ‘intelligent’ warehouse receipt based trading system including trading facility for commodity futures. To be done 3

Price Risk Management Corporate Buyer Mill Owner Mandi Broker Mandi Digital Mandi

Hindi Unicode Search

Important Issues Appropriate Innovation adoption model. Reengineering of rural markets. Mutation in socio-technical networks. Banking and other corporate partners. Virtual clusters and market driven ICT strategies for rural India.