IT bears no Fruit for Farmers.

(From Indian Express)

THE Mahiti Kendra (Information Centre) stands right next to a three-acre field where Laxman Gadekar grows cotton and sugarcane in Dadh village, Ahmednagar district. At the click of a mouse, the computer at the Kendra can provide weather updates, video-conferencing with agricultural scientists, even prescriptions from doctors 15 km away. Yet Gadekar, an illiterate farmer, does none of this. One-and-half years after 10-odd Kendras were set up in Ahmednagar by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) - an outreach organisation of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) - to bridge the digital divide by adapting technology to local conditions, the rift has only widened between the privileged (read the informed) and the others. With little education and even less awareness, the ordinary farmer remains unaffected by the easily accessible gigabytes of information on crops, pests, realtime weather updates and market information in Marathi. Take Rafiq Sayedali Inamdar, who plans to grow vegetables. He could have consulted scientists at a video conference for advice or settled on a market for his produce through the Intranet service or studied the drought-like conditions. He did none of this. ''I know of such a centre, but I've never been there,'' he admits. Not that there aren't any beneficiaries for the very comprehensive KVK site or the online courses in agricultural diversification and rural employment. The end-users are the rich, landed educated farmers who drive down to the Kendras from neighbouring villages. ''Yes, the uneducated, poor farmers are a minority here,'' says Babasaheb Ghangre, who mans the Dadh Kendra. The centre registers the average of 8-10 inquiries a day, but most of them come from the so-called gentleman farmers. Chief scientist at KVK Bhaskar Gaikwad ...