In many ways typical of millions of farmers across India whose faces reflect not just the hardwork they put in to till their land amid difficult conditions, that's always a way of life with them, Rakesh Patidar and Rajesh Nigodia are middle-class farmers with incomes that could easily help them lead a comfortable life by rural standards. However, still, like many of their ilk in the rest of the country, these two farmers do not lead a normal life. Thanks to years of government apathy, corruption, and half-baked development projects, life is not easy in Tumda village in Bhopal district of Madhya Pradesh where Rakesh lives, nor Badi Mungali in Sehore district of the state where Rajesh lives. Even though not very far from the state capital Bhopal, these two villages seem to be medieval in their existence. They have no access roads worth the name nor do they get proper power supply. They have no access to a good health or education system. This is the state of affairs despite the billions of rupees that the Indian government earmarks every year for farmers across India.

Not only does e-Choupal allow farmers to check both futures' prices across the globe and local prices as well, but it also provides them access to local weather conditions, new farming techniques and the like

Residents of the village, most of them farmers, do not actually expect the government to make a positive change in their lives. "This government or that government it really does not matter for us. It's only the level of rhetoric that keeps going up, everything else just degenerates with each passing year," tells Rajesh Nigodia when asked if he expects things to change under the supposedly more farmer-friendly regime in New Delhi or the new BJP dispensation at Bhopal which won popular support harping on lack of bijli (electricity), sadak (road), and pani (water) in the state. Cynicism at work, could be what most of us would like to say unless you have visited the two villages.

Amid all this, Rakesh and Rajesh, and thousands of other farmers in Madhya Pradesh have found a very unlikely savior in the Internet. Unlikely, because Internet or for that matter anything similar to it was much beyond their imagination until ITC came up with the concept of e-Choupal. Relying on the power of the Internet to deliver customized and localized information, ITC, one of India's leading diversified conglomerates, is in many ways transforming the lives of thousands of farmers across the state. While for ITC e-Choupal makes good business sense, helping it beat competition in procuring tons of valuable soybean, for the farmers e-Choupal is about informed decision making. Not only does e-Choupal allow the farmers to check both futures prices across the globe and local prices before they sell their produce in the market, it also provides them access to local weather conditions, soil testing, and new farming techniques and other expert knowledge like proper use of pesticides and insecticides that are crucial for increasing productivity.

Thanks to e-Choupal, farmers like Rakesh and Rajesh now not only get a better prices for their produce, but also produce more soybean than what they used to earlier. "For years we practiced unscientific farming techniques...all this is gradually changing now as we are more aware of what is right and what is wrong," says Rakesh Patidar of Tumda village.

Understanding the village economy

Rakesh Patidar and Rajesh Nigodia are two of the around 1,700 sanchalaks, a name given by ITC to those in charge of an equal number of e-Choupals in Madhya Pradesh. The focal point of the e-Choupal is the interactive website www.echoupal.com or www.soyachoupal.com, which contains information on local weather, farming techniques, soil examination, and market news. Besides, the website also contains information on government projects. Moreover, the websites also contain email facility that the farmers can use to send email to anybody in the world. In Madhya Pradesh, sanchalaks have been using e-mail to network among themselves and share information.

What is also interesting is that villagers are beginning to use their newfound access to Internet to look for other information as well. In many villages of Madhya Pradesh it is now common for villagers to look for examination results on Internet. Many of the farmers this writer spoke to in Tumda and Badi Mungali said that use of Internet has helped them get better prices for their produce and also to know and understand better farming techniques.

A cursory look at the e-Choupal model would lead one to believe that there is nothing great about it-there is one e-Choupal for every 30–40 villages, each e-Choupal is equipped with a PC connected to the Internet via a VSAT, a printer, specially designed UPS for power backup, and is managed by one sanchalak (coordinator) who has been imparted some basic skills for using the Internet. But what ITC has done by way of e-Choupal is innovative, and challenging too. It has been challenging because ITC had to build up the entire network despite severe infrastructural problems with power supply, telecom connectivity and bandwidth, and inaccessible roads. More challenging has been the task of imparting Internet skills to farmers who had never seen a computer before and then building a relationship of trust with them. In many ways, ITC has overcome these challenges through effort and innovation. Many more still remain to be overcome.

Two factors which have made it easy for the sanchalaks to use the Internet is use of Hindi on the website and very user-friendly keyboards. Together, both make the computer appear very friendly to the users. In fact, the localization and customization of the information provided on the website and its close relationship with the daily activities of the farmers has been the key to project's success in Madhya Pradesh.

What is commendable about e-Choupal is that unlike many other Internet or IT-driven projects run by government or by private companies, e-Choupal is not another public relations exercise or for that matter a 'feel-good' project having more of hype than substance. Launched in June 2000, e-Choupal is by far the biggest Internet-based interventions in rural India and quite successful too. According to ITC, e-Choupal services today reach out to more than two million farmers cultivating a range of crops-soybean, coffee, wheat, rice, pulses, shrimp-in over 21,000 villages through 4,100 kiosks across six states (Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan). And the network is growing every day. While many would still like to term e-Choupal as a successful experiment in CRM, supply-chain management, de-risking, and knowledge management largely meant to aid the business goals of ITC, we would prefer to call it one of the most innovative efforts at harnessing the power of the Internet for social good. There is no denying that what ITC is doing is no social service. If e-Choupal would not have aided its business, the concept would probably never have been implemented. However, we must also accept that the success of e-Choupal bears testimony that innovative private sector business initiatives can be effective in bringing about a positive change in rural India.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey