A case study on e-extension in west Bengal

Farmers are the traditional innovators in agriculture, and actively engage in communication about innovation. ICT provides a new channel for this communication. The key for development actors is to understand the traditional process of farmer innovation in order to succeed in bringing ICT in line to support this. Communities themselves will also drive this through their own choices around technology and its application.

The mobile phone and new processes using video are mentioned as the most popular modern ICT for farmer-tofarmer communication and innovation sharing, noting that video normally requires the involvement of an intermediary. While communication at this level has always existed, and ICT can simply supplement these channels, with increased communication there is a much greater need for individuals (e.g. extension agents, intermediaries) to validate and further disseminate the information, and support its adoption.

Agricultural extension services provide critical access to the knowledge, information and technology that farmers require to improve the productivity and thus improve the quality of their lives and livelihoods. It is found that ICT allows efficient and transparent storage, processing and communication of information and that entrepreneurial innovation in this field may affect economic and social change (Kaushik and Singh, 2004). According to Meera et al. (2004), ICT would enable extension workers to gather, store, retrieve and disseminate a broad range of information needed by small producers such as information on best practices, new technology, better prices of inputs and outputs, better storage facilities, improved transportation links, collective negotiations with buyers, information on weather.Mobile phone technology has been diffused rapidly in the rural areas of the developing countries in recent years. It has the advantage over other ICT tools in terms of its appropriateness for the under-developed local conditions. Internet in mobile with 2G and 3G service provide additional benefit to the rural area. Social community site such as Face book, we chat and skype are the prosective communication site which are not eventually accepted by the farmer due to inadequate knowledge. Chowdhury (2006) finds a negative effect of ICT investment on the labour productivity of East African small and medium-size enterprises, which is likely due to the low cost of labour relative to capital in East Africa which prevents substitutability being a profit maximizing approach. Moreover, a lack of knowledge of best practices in IT usage as well as IT-related skill deficiencies in the workforce will also constrain the benefits from ICT, as argued by Kaushik and Singh (2004) based on case studies of two projects in North India.

In west Bengal e-extension play a major role for development of agriculture.

Matir kotha- a online problem solving site. Farmers can enter there quary , with in a short time answer come in automatically or by the expert.Kisan call centre kisan call center (kcc), Kolkata is a good application of ict in agriculture. it uses open source

software. Experts answer farmer queries on best agronomic practices and pest outbreaks. these queries are analysed and if there is any endemic, timely advice can be beamed by the state agencies through tv, radio etc. kcc, bhopal was set up with support from govt of madhya pradesh in 2008. it has answered 5,00,000 queries during 2008 - 2011. increasing queries every year shows the relevance of kcc and its popularity among the farmers. advance mis system captures entire milieu of advisory services provided and at the same time provides backend data support to the knowledge workers. The domain experts answer calls related to agriculture, market prices, weather forecast, govt schemes etc. kcc received manthan award south asia in 2009-10 under category