The Power of Information: Impact of Knowledge Sharing Agri Portals in Rural India
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Authors
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Kiran Yadav
Communication Officer, Center for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP) —
Hyderabad, India
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Gyanendra Sharma
Professor, Agricultural Communication. College of Agriculture, GBPUA&T. Pantnagar —
Uttarakhand, India.
Abstract
In agriculture and rural development, a variety of fairly large-scale and
mature ICT-enabled projects are providing social and economic value all
along the agro-value chain by filling the information gap for the farmers. Such
projects, directly linked to income-generating activities, have visible direct
economic value for end-users. The large projects have impact on up to several
million rural dwellers, while benefiting all actors of rural development.
However, the impact assessment of these projects is still an open issue in terms
of methodology and results, which leads to failure of many such ICT initiatives
especially in agriculture. The present study is an effort towards assessing two
such ICT initiatives in agriculture launched by the Government of India.
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