aAQUA - A CASE Study (http://www.aAQUA.org)

Index

About aAQUA 01 16

aAQUA in Media 17 26

Summary of 18 Q&A 27 30

Illustration of 18 threads 31 68 (Success Story/Discussion Q&A)

ICT for empowering Emerging Regions 71 105 (Presentation slides)

aAQUA : A Story of building knowledge from farmer questions

Krithi Ramamritham1, Anil Bahuman2

1 IIT, Bombay 2 Agrocom, India

How farmers use aAQUA? Patil is an onion farmer from Nasik area. He is worried by a brown coloration on his crop which could mean reduced yields and lower income after harvest. Just to be sure it means nothing; he consults his friend and progressive farmer Sahebrao about it. Sahebrao suggests using Photo Capture a remote diagnosis solution he recently purchased for his mobile phone. Patil is guided by Marathi audio prompts, takes a photo of the affected area and sends it to www.aaqua.org.

The agri-experts replying to aAQUA questions, study the photo sent by Patil, diagnose it as Alternaria and suggest dosage and schedule of pesticides and organic inputs to control the damage. He is excited to receive an answer within 24 hours, and shares the experts response with Sahebrao. Sahebrao finds the recommended solution as reasonable and advises Patil to apply the control measures immediately. Patil approaches the market to purchase the required inputs. He wants to learn to type text on his mobile phone so that he can interact with the experts in future.

aAQUA receives questions every hour from different parts of the country

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Which Organizations support aAQUA?

In 2003, the Developmental Informatics Lab at IIT Bombay launched a web portal for agriculturists Almost All Questions Answered (www.aaqua.org). The portal was tested in Pune district of Maharashtra by aAQUA partner Vigyan Ashram a rural school. School children collected the first questions from local farmers. Answers were provided by KVK Baramati by the team led by Dr Kadarbhai. The agri-experts matched the language of the farmer with answers given in Marathi, Hindi or English. The portal and technology was licensed to Agrocom Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. for the purpose of scale-up and staff support. The mobile team at the Developmental Informatics Lab at IIT Bombay is extending aAQUA to the mobile phone to make it more easily available to progressive farmers owning a mobile phone. ICRISAT is helping design the communication strategy to help scale aAQUA within Indian Council of Agricultural Research organizations the backbone of the agricultural research and extension system in the country. Reputed agri-universities and their KVKs are exploring various tools available in aAQUA to use what they find useful in their regions.

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Media Lab Asia IITB: CSE Building Entrance

The aAQUA Story: Genesis (2002-2006)

1. Media Lab Asia - an organization funded by MCIT was formed in 2002 with the objective of scaling up and commercializing technologies developed at IITB that can be used by the common man. Dr. Bishnu Pradhan - with his past experience working with technology development and transfer at IITs - took up the position of Director at Media Lab Asia. The objective was to nurture technologies ready for commercialization and create some artifacts through sponsored projects with the mandate of developing new ICT and electronics enabled products and services to help reduce socio-economic divides. Prof. Krithi Ramamritham, with his experience in technology development and transfer set up a Lab at IIT Bombay called Media Lab Asia-Bombay.

2. Dr. Krithi Ramamritham and few other faculties at IIT Bombay spawned three projects Interfaces for All (under Anirudha Joshi), Agroexplorer (under Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharya) and Polysensors (under. Dr Contractor and several others). Interfaces for All developed prototypes of PC based applications for small town and rural users. Agroexplorer developed a search portal for agricultural content designed for farmers and agri-experts. Polysensors developed sensors to speed up water-quality testing in village environment.

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Overview of Research Groups at Media Lab Asia IITB 3. Dr Bishnu Pradhan hired Anil Bahuman to start a collaboration

between MIT Media Lab in the US, IIT Bombay and Vigyan Ashram a rural school headed by Dr Srinath Kalbag, a visionary who created a 1 year Rural Technology Course to train rural school drop-outs and empower them with skills to find jobs or turn into entrepreneurs. Anil

spent 6 months at Vigyan Ashram supporting 3D fabrication (using CNC machines), educational software, well water resource mapping and long-distance wireless projects. He met Yogesh Kulkarni, an employee of Vigyan Ashram who helped market educational CDs developed by Vigyan Ashram.

Vigyan Ashram Entrance

4. Anil and Yogesh were guided by Dr Kalbag on the needs of rural people and technology interventions that can have the largest impact in increasing the livelihood of rural people. One of the projects that he also invested in (in collaboration with N-logue, a company supporting Rural Internet Services) was a group of 45 m towers that provided telephony and internet connections in the Pabal area which in 2002-2003 did not have cable TV, mobile signals or telephones. Anil and Yogesh initiated trials in long distance wireless communication using WiFi and broadcasting equipment.

5. 2003 was a tumultuous year for the team. Dr Kalbag passed away leaving Vigyan Ashram in Yogeshs hands. GoI did not renew the contract with MIT Media Lab. The management team at Media Lab

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Asia (based at Andheri, Mumbai) was dissolved due to several reasons and the responsibility of continuing the projects that had been incubated in the first year was given to the Directors of each of the IITs. Most staff sitting outside IITs left the organization. Anil Bahuman was inducted for technology deployment and transfer at Media Lab Asia at IIT Bombay.

Appu, the farmer mascot Starting slide of our presentations

6. Media Lab Asia at IIT Bombay had initiated some applications aAQUA (a forum to answer queries from citizens), Bhav Puchiye (a price information website for farmers using simple color icons), Devanagari Keyboard (a keyboard with a simple layout to help new Hindi users to type quickly, later designed for other Indian languages), Agro Explorer-Meaning Based Search for farmers and agri-community (a search engine that was better than searching by keywords, accomplished by using algorithms designed for multi-lingual information retrieval).

sadas Market Rate for Crops: Bhav Puchiye Search in Hindi: AgroExplorer

7. Anil and Pallab Bhattacharya were asked to study the possible deployment of Bhav Puchiye, aAQUA and Devnagari Keyboard for the Pabal network of kiosks in Rajgurunagar, Shirur and Haveli talukas of Pune district. They visited Pabal Internet kiosks, interviewed all

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kiosk operators and studied their income-generating and information services. MoU was signed between IITB and Vigyan Ashram to promote and test aAQUA and other projects in Rajgurunagar, Shirur & Haveli Talukas.

8. Anil and Yogesh interviewed 12 people for deployment team, 4 were short listed and asked to spend 3 days in villages and build village web sites. Finally two people were selected; Shantanu Inamdar and Rahul Swami joined as Field Executives based at Pabal.

9. Bhav Puchiye, aAQUA and Devanagari Keyboard were installed at Pabal Kiosks. Yogesh suggested collecting farmer questions and answering them online. Vigyan Ashram students were given assignments to collect farmer questions by visiting their homes and farms. The questions were answered by Shantanu & Rahul who consulted Internet and local expert-farmers. (September 2003)

10. Kiosk Operator Training was held at Baramati (Pune District) for Kiosk Operators (these were the early days of rural internet kiosks, Pabal and Baramati setup the first N-Logue Kiosks). Shantanu & Rahul were asked to attend the Training workshop and meet other kiosk operators in Maharashtra. While they were there, they met Dr Kadarbhai, Director of KVK Baramati at the workshop and demonstrated the tools developed at DIL on their laptop. Dr Kadarbhai showed interest in the work and sought collaboration with IITB. Krithi & Anil met Dr Kadarbhai and decided to sign a MoU regarding collaboration for aAQUA, Bhav Puchiye and other projects.

Krishi Vidnyan Kendra Baramati Entrance

11. MoUs signed with KVK Baramati & Vigyan Ashram to promote aAQUA in Rajgurunagar, Shirur & Haveli Talukas. 2 Experts at KVK began answering the questions at KVK. Rahul Swami was asked to move to KVK to assist the experts with aAQUA data entry and other technical support. He also began gathering requirements for Bhav Puchiye customized to the local Baramati Mandi.

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Question with photo from kiosk operator

12. Shantanu & Rahul formed a Kiosk Operator Association at Pabal (over 20 kiosks were present) to introduce new information as well as revenue generating services to support kiosk operator income. Kiosk Operator Association suggested farmer clubs & aAQUA consultancy. IITB allowed the kiosks to charge for print outs of aAQUA answers charged at Rs 10 and one of the kiosk operators with a degree in management started agri-consultancy charging Rs 500 per acre. Several farmer clubs were created among the more hard-working kiosk operators who held regular meetings for farmers.

An early diagram showing the information flow between farmer and experts.

There were no mobile services then.

13. Media Lab Asia at IIT Bombay renamed as Developmental Informatics Lab (DIL, close to our hearts). Several publications were released on the DIL website. New people were hired at the lab programmers, designers and experts in languages (Hindi, Marathi). aAQUA team was formed with Subhasri Duttagupta and Anil as their managers. The team size grew from 4 to 9 people. Few internships were also offered

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for MCA students and final year students of Amritandamayi University (Kerala), many of whom would join as full time staff.

A snapshot of early year statistics from aAQUA. The number of queries is less in the month of February (and March) because its harvesting time. It picks up in June again.

14. One of the recurring requests at the farmers meeting is if our project could offer them alternative markets with higher income realization. This was outside the scope of the project but a few IIT faculty donated their own money to Vigyan Ashram to pilot a service linking farmers and Pune market via the Kiosk Operator Association. Yogesh introduced the Kiosk Operator Association to Mangesh Hospital where they received their first steady orders for the supply of daily produce with a limited budget to support the activity from Vigyan Ashram with few expenses borne by the enterprising kiosk operators. The idea was to look for orders from Pune software company employees as well.

15. After 3 months, the budget ran out and the orders did not pick up beyond Mangesh Hospital. The service was not making money at the small volume they were supplying and the Kiosk Operator Association decided to quit. Shantanu and Rahul recounted the experience back at IITB where they made scheduled monthly visits to interact with the team and receive direction for the progress of aAQUA. By mid-2005, several kiosks were sending regular questions on aAQUA with the highest questions coming from an enterprising kiosk operator Babasaheb Sawant of Urali Kanchan village (Pune district) underlining the observation (also mentioned in several studies) that the success of kiosks depends on the entrepreneurial abilities of these operators esp. their ability to generate income from other revenue streams. The main

May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Forum

name

Crop 7 10 13 12 25 45 31 32 44 13

Animal 0 2 2 2 3 0 0 0 2 2

Others 0 7 2 1 1 5 2 1 2 1

Market 2 0

Total 7 19 17 15 29 50 33 33 50 18

Posted by

field Eng 1 11 10 4 4 15 7 5 4 4 Kiosk

operator 6 2 6 9 12 18

16 18 31

2 Users 0 6 1 2 13 17 10 9 15 12

Total 7 19 17 15 29 50 33 33 50 18 * Response by expert

Avg. Response

Time (days) 2 2.2 2.5 3.6

2.4 2.2 3.88 2.68

2.27

Min Response

Time 2.5 hrs

8 min

7 mi

n 20

hrs 2

hrs

9 mi

n 2 hrs 1 hr 10

min

4 min

Max Response

Time (days) 4 6 5 6 16

22 14 5 17

7

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revenue earner at the Pabal & Baramati kiosks was MKCLs MSCIT course an online IT exam mandatory for applying for several state government posts. Below are the services offered:

16. aAQUA was answering questions from 3-4 states and was recognized

at an event in Delhi conducted by Digital Empowerment Foundation with the first prize (Gold Award) for Indias Best eContent Practices supporting e-Inclusion. aAQUA Campaigns (awareness-building by meeting farmers and kiosks from village to village) were planned and executed by Shantanu & Rahul joined by the lab team on several occasions. On one such occasion Prof Krithi met each kiosk operator at their kiosk giving them photographs of the award and certificate, a gesture to recognize that this would not have been possible without their efforts. Several newspaper articles published by KVK Baramati, Vigyan Ashram, DIL at IITB and others who learnt about the projects helped bring questions to aAQUA from far-away places. Government of Maharashtra portal recognized the work and requested write-ups and all tools at IITB were placed on the homepage of the State Government Website.

aAQUA deployment team Anil Bahuman Manager Yogesh Kulkarni Director, Vigyan Ashram Dr Parab aAQUA expert at KVK Rahul Swami aAQUA moderator Shantanu Inamdar Kiosk marketing Devendra Shrisath aAQUA experts moderator Rural youths involved from Vigyan Ashram

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Maruti Tamhane Antenna setting, testing (Rajgurunagar and Retawdi)

Kailash Jadhav Antenna setting (Pabal) Laxman Jadhav Welding and structures Sachin Chavan Communication Ashram students Assistance 10 Kiosk operators aAQUA kiosks IIT Research Staff Krithi Ramamritham Principal investigator Subhasri Dasgupta Manager Varun Chandrasekhar Research Assistant Chaitra Rao Research Assistant Hari Krishnan Research Assistant Chandrasekhar Research Assistant Sreeju Research Assistant Nisha Mehadale Accounts Vivekanada Tadala MTech Student

Snapshot of Team in February 2005 (Several people contributed to the aAQUA effort, and only managers and faculty are acknowledged in the rest of

the text)

17. Several new projects were spawned in Agriculture, ideas coming directly from field experiences and from our partners. Crop Doctor and Recommendations (KVK Baramati), Digital Library (DIL), Multi-Lingual Search on aAQUA documents improved by a large team of translators working under Lalitha Nagarajan and Dr Pushpak Bhattacharya (IITB), Expertss Internet Cache search (DIL), aAQUA ported to handheld devices such as the Encore Mobilus, Simputer with small footprint databases, web crawling for Agri-documents to supplement information on aAQUA, keyword tagging of aAQUA Q&A to help categorize the Q&A and make it easier for experts to reuse previous answers while answering new questions.

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Summary of Artifacts as on January 2005

18. By early 2006, under the leadership of Malati Baru and Anil, aAQUA was receiving continuous questions from various parts of the country without any promotion, but the Pabal and Baramati kiosks were declining. This was because the requirements for an MSCIT Centre was made more stringent for the sake of quality, which was not in favor of small kiosks (since a minimum number of computers and infrastructure was set). Most kiosk operators moved on to other jobs in data entry or IT jobs. Only those who had other primary revenue earners continued in their village (e.g. Desktop Publishing & Photography or Medical Store with PC kiosk).

aAQUA on the Encore Mobilus Handheld

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19. The Labs experience with increasing aAQUAs reach beyond the

Internet through strategic partnerships were slow because most internet kiosk projects were growing at a very slow pace. The lab turned to the mobile phone as an alternative to information dissemination to reach the underserved. With 10 times the penetration, this offered new possibilities in reaching out to large number of farmers. Overtime, the lab under the leadership of Chaitra Bahuman, developed a suite of applications meant for mobile phones with basic computing capabilities. Though most applications required high-end phones, we realized that the prices of such phones were dropping rapidly. Some of our commercial partners though, questioned whether we could take up large scale deployments if given the opportunity. Would a lab be able to sign contracts, deliver data products, maintain hardware and software strictly by deadlines and provide support anywhere in the country. We considered incubating a company to take aAQUA beyond where it had come. It had been a very long journey since 2002.

20. In September 2006, Agrocom Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

was born with 5 cofounders Krithi, Anil, Bishnu, Kadarbhai and Yogesh. Media Lab Asia & IIT Bombay transferred the aAQUA technology, content usage and commercialization rights to Agrocom. While this is another story, the products are currently offered by Agrocom are aAQUA Books in several volumes, aAQUA Box solution with Offline Software and SMS and Voice-call delivery capability.

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Good Research

aAQUA is an artifact that incorporated innovations in several research areas in computer science databases, caching algorithms, multilingual information retrieval, catering to low-bandwidth connections. More details are available in our publications at http://www.dil.iitb.ac.in/pubs.htm or you can search on aaqua on Google Scholar Search at: http://scholar.google.co.in/

The current team at DIL helping improve aAQUA include Chaitra, Manjiri Joshi, Vibhawari Kapale, Kalyansagar, Pradeep Agarwal, Jitesh Dundas. Contact: chaitra@it.iitb.ac.in

The current team at Agrocom promoting aAQUA include Anil, Ajit, Shashidhar, Amol, Ashish and Vijayanand. Contact: aaqua@agrocom.co.in

Defining Features

Some of the defining features of aAQUA are:

Capturing Questions in a Natural Manner. A review of the question-answer database has shown that our farmers questions are (a) usually short sentences, (b) use wrong grammar or spelling at times, (c) typed in English alphabet with words in local language, (d) sometimes posted as scanned documents with text (e) some questions are uploaded as pictures, audio or video.

Multlinguality. aAQUA is capable of multi-lingual retrieval in 3 Languages spoken among Indian farmers Marathi, Hindi and English, allowing the user to search and/or select agricultural keywords on the database. The multilingual categorization is useful for users fluent in two or more languages (which is quite common in India). The original search query is expanded with their counterparts in each language. It allows users to search in their own language and retrieve content in other languages.

Reuse of knowledge in previous answers. Unlike most online discussion forums and web portals, a review of our search query logs has indicated that our users infrequently use the Search feature. The Browse by Agricultural keywords was a feature motivated by the same observation. When a question is asked, the expert uses this tool to find previous answers that can be reused. e.g., If the expert is searching for Powdery mildew disease on tomato he could look under Crops and and refine his search to Powdery mildew , see Figure 4.

Tagging of aAQUA threads. The agricultural keywords are in the noun form and are tagged to enable classification by our group of agri-experts. The tagging method used is similar to labels used by Google Mail or tags used by deli.cio.us. Retrieval of documents by these keywords is being improved by incorporating stemmers and spell-checkers (measured by precision and recall). The limitation is that the precision may be compromised. E.g., If powdery is stemmed to powder the number of hits increase several times, reducing precision and increasing recall.

Figure 2 : Refining search by Crop and Disease name

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Integrating with email and mobile phones. aAQUA has also been tailored to cater to users with limited access to the internet in several ways. Users can post their questions over email as well as mobile phone text (SMS) and receive their answers back.

Figure 3: Keyword search on aAQUA Mobile

We now reflect on the original goals of building aAQUA i.e. to provide access to agri-information that is reachable, accessible, timely, customized, usable, and searchable and the extent to which these goals were achieved.

aAQUA Goals

Reachable Across 290 districts Accessible PC, PC with limited

Internet & Mobile Affordable Kiosk operators charge

no more than Rs. 10 per question

Relevant Content customized to citizens specific questions

Usable Majority of users and extension staff find it easy to use

Searchable By keyword selection or keyword search

Up to Date Answer updated within 36 hours, Archives are not updated

Table 1: aAQUA vis--vis its goals

Agrocom, a spin-off startup company based at IIT Bombay is assisting in the replication of aAQUA system within the Indian Agri-University and Agri-Extension System, specifically in (a) increasing the number of experts on the panel (b) creating partnerships with organizations who have a large number of farmer customers. It has an ambitious goal of reaching 1 million farmers by 2011.

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Figure9: Where do aAQUA Questions come from? aAQUA today is reaching out to 20,000 farmers over mobile phones and Internet

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About aAQUA in Media Pune News Online, Pune, 2004-12-18

Title :Genext help for farmers, courtesy IIT

Pune, December 17: STALL number 102 had just four jeans-clad youngsters, two laptops and a bunch of printouts. But the bedlam of literally hundreds of pajama-kurta-topi clad farmers thronging seed, farm machinery, fertiliser, pesticide, horticulture stalls, fruit and vegetable shows, the boys from IIT Bombay were in no way blindsided. All they had were a few projects, but ones which offered next generation tech-based agri-solutions, and that wasnt lost on the agri community that descended on Kisan 04, a large-scale agri expo being held at the Agricultural Produce Committee ground on the Pune-Nashik highway at Moshi. Advertisement Under the name of Media Lab Asia (MLA), the IITians had on offer innovative IT-based equipment, such as the Poly-Sens a system for water quality assessment. MLA claim that the microchip-controlled instrument can give results across several chemical parameters, within a minute. This saves waiting for several days for results. As of now, the instrument costs upto Rs 10,000, but with a manufacturing tie-up, the price would come down a lot, says S Phatak, an ex-IITian working with MLA. Also on offer is aAQUA, an online multilingual, multimedia Q&A-based community forum for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the agri community. This forum results in development of content in ones local language. Another innovation which MLA claims is a step ahead of existing search engines in terms of understanding the query, not just keywords is the Agro Explorer an internet-based search engine that answers queries in local languages. Also bringing IT to the farmer is Farm News Bureau. Run by Nimitya Enterprises, the firm has on offer over 40 CDs, each describing how various crops and agri products should be planted, cultivated and harvested. We havent counted our sales, but in the past two days, we have sold upto 500 CDs, informed Milind Sadhale of Farm News Bureau. Also on display were solar-powered equipment of different sizes, a flower show of hybridised species, individual exhibits by farmers including a 70-kilo bunch of bananas. The exhibition is on till Sunday.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=110818

The Hindu, Chennai, 2005-09-10

Title :St Jude's School wins IT quiz

CHENNAI: : "Merciless and brilliant" were the words quizmaster Giri Balasubramaniam chose to describe the onslaught of Neetu Thomas and Naina Thomas, the pair that won this year's TCS IT Wiz an inter-school Information Technology quiz for their school, St. Jude's, Kotagiri. In the seven years of the TCS IT Wiz, Mr. Balasubramaniam said it was the first time that an all-girls team had come first. The entire hall of schoolchildren at the Kamaraj Arangam gave the winners a standing ovation. The Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu , N. Ram, who was the chief guest, said to them "the future belongs to you. You have a long way to go, though." Bala Vidya Mandir, Chennai, was the runner-up. Don Bosco School came third. Over 750 teams participated in the quiz. Six teams made it to the finals. Padma Seshadri, Nungambakkam, came sixth but they got a special mention, as they were the youngest pair both from class nine. The other teams were all class 12 students. The questions were enough to stump a person with an average knowledge of IT. Take for instance aAqua not everyone would know what it stands for Almost All Questions Answered, a kiosk-based, multilingual online forum to help Indian farmers solve agricultural problems. But the audience consisting mostly of excited young boys with grubby knees and enthusiastic girls in pigtails did. "Chennai please, I know the excitement really gets to you," said Mr. Balasubramaniam, trying his best to keep the cap-throwing, clapping, dancing crowd quiet. The quiz, which is organised to promote "IT awareness and young talent," had five gruelling rounds in the finals

http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/10/stories/2005091016370300.htm

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Indian Express, New Delhi, 2005-10-28

Title :PM bats for Baramati

NIRMALA GANAPATHY Posted: Oct 28, 2005 at 0000 hrs IST NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 27 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today singled out Baramati, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawars constituency, for praise on its agricultural successes, and expressed hope that Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) around the country would take inspiration from there. Addressing the audience after inaugurating the first two-day national conference on KVKs, the prime minister appeared to reviseat least in the context of Baramatihis earlier criticism of the collapse of agricultural extension work and the huge gap between the latest farm technology and farmers, a gap that KVKs are supposed to bridge. Listening closely to the prime ministers commendation was Dhananjay Bhovsar, a programme officer associated with the KVK at Baramati. Innovative measures are the only way to make a difference in agriculture extension, he said. A case in point is a pilot project scheme called aAQUA, acronym for Almost All Questions Answered. Floated by KVK Baramati in association with IIT Mumbai and Vigyan Ashram, it provides online answers to questions asked over the Internet in an attempt to bridge the farmer-research gap. AQUA is currently operational in 11 kiosks, covering 44 villages in Baramati and neighbouring areas. Everyday, we have 25-30 farmers coming to the kiosks with a range of questions, said Bhovsar. Information technology has to be strengthened so that farmers can access the research undertaken by scientists. Baramati, of course, is far from being the norm. Agriculture secretary Radha highlighted the fact in her presentation, by complaining that scientific findings were not making their way to the farming community. Theres a lot of research happening, but it takes years to reach farmers, she said, adding that the gap needed to be bridged. The onus is clearly on the scientific community, with the prime minister saying that a second green revolution could be achieved only if researchers provided crop-specific, region-specific, resource-specific and farm-specific solutions. I am told there are estimates that indicate that even with the current available technologies, it is possible to double the present food production by the end of the 11th plan, Singh said. Agriculture experts agree that farmers are able to access barely 30 per cent of what scientists know. There are thousands of technologies, the KVKs are supposed to transfer them to the field. But hardly 30 per cent reaches the farmer, said P Chandrashekara, deputy director (agriculture extension) at the National Institute of Agriculture Extension Management in Hyderabad. KVKs also need to link farmers to post-harvest techniques and markets. In defence of the extension failure, it may be said many more outposts are required. We train farmers in the latest technology, but in a month we can train only 150 farmers, said K S Bhargava, training associate agriculture engineer in the Kutch KVK. There are not enough workers, not enough KVKs. The prime minister had earlier announced that each district in the country would have its own KVK by 2007. At present, of the 588 rural districts, 492 have a KVK each to provide scientific knowledge and training to farmers. The Indian Council for Agriculture Research is in the process of setting up KVKs in the rest of the districts by the end of the Tenth Plan period. Also in the works: provision for e-linkages to 200 KVKs along with extension of soil and water testing facilities in 326 KVKs. http://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/80872/

DIL, IIT Bombay, Development Informatics Lab, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, 2006-01-01

Title :aAQUA A MULTILINGUAL, MULTIMEDIA FORUM FOR THE COMMUNITY

aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to rural communities. It answers farmers' queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. aAQUA makes use of novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronization, semantic-based search, etc. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of

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knowledge management, cross-lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations. Apart from agriculture, aAQUA can be configured and customized for expert advice in education, healthcare and other domains of interest to a developing population. This demonstration showcases the utility of various component DB/IR technologies built into aAQUA to enhance the QoS delivered to rural populations.

http://www.dil.iitb.ac.in/docs/aAQUA.pdf

i4d, Maharashtra, India, 2006-03-09

Title :Sixth Annual Baramati Initiative, 9-11 March 2006, Maharashtra, India

Sixth Annual Baramati Initiative, 9-11 March 2006, Maharashtra, India ICTs in agriculture Saswati Paik Sr Assistant Editor The Sixth Annual Baramati Initiative on Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development was held in Vidya Prathishthan's Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), Baramati from 9th to 11th March, 2006. This year, the focus of the conference was on ICTs in agriculture. In the inaugural session, VIIT Governing Council Chairman, Sharad Kulkarni said that the process of exploring avenues is in progress, through which governments, NGOs, and entrepreneurs can focus on e-Agriculture. In his speech he mentioned the history of establishing the engineering college in Baramati. In 1992, Sharad Pawar, who is at present the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, dared to dream of translating 128 acres of barren land into a prominent centre of education. He mentioned some of the initiatives taken by this institution in terms of IT-enabled 'affordable' services. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission was the keynote speaker. He threw some hard challenges to the 6th annual Baramati Initiative on ICT and Development. He pointed to the importance of the agriculture field in India and termed IT one of those 'defining technologies' that bring about a drastic change. He mentioned that India has done extraordinarily well as supplier of IT to the world, this nation has responded incredibly rapidly, as part of the global supply chain of IT, but our record of applying IT to our own society back home has actually been quite poor. The first technical session was on Innovative Practices showcasing the Benefits of ICT for the Agriculture Sector'. Krithi Ramamrutham, of IIT-Bombay, described aAQUA, a corpus of quickly-updated, demand-driven agricultural information, translations repository. 'Aaqua' stands for 'almost all questions answered'. It aims to make online forum allowing 'questions from the grassroots to be answered by experts in the field'. Peter Smeets, Alterra Landscape Centre in the Wageningen UR in the Netherlands spoke on e-Agroparks in the Netherlands. The paper of Amol Goje, Director of VIIT was presented by his colleague which focused on the importance of community FM radio in agriculture. Helmut ewes from Agrista, Durban discussed about the prospect of technology in agriculture sector. S.P.Wani from ICRISAT, Hyderabad discussed the organisational activities of ICRISAT in agriculture using ICT as a major tool. The second session was on 'Role of ICT in Facilitating Agri-finance and Agri-insurance. R.Balakrishnan, Executive Director, NABARD described the activities of NABARD in micro credit and also described its ICT based services in rural areas in India. Edwin Moyo of Zimbabwe, the CEO of the Trans Zambezi Industries Ltd, shared his views and experiences in using ICT in agriculture. Suresh Sethi, Country Head Transaction Banking Group, YES Bank Limited presented his paper entitled as 'Role of ICT in Agricultural Finance and Insurance'. In his paper he mentioned about the 'Infothela' project, an initiative of IIT, Kanpur. The paper of Sonu Agrawal from Weather Risk Management Services Pvt. Ltd. was on 'Financial Services in Rural Areas and Role of Technology. Prashanth from Basix discussed the role Basix in micro credit and livelihood using ICT as a tool. Vineet Rai from Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund focused on role of technology in delivery of financial services. Question from the audience floor was raised regarding the scalability of the project by Basix, it was replied that the project is scalable. Another question was regarding the experiment made so far on estimating crop damage with the help of satellite imageries. The reply received that the experiment will be done in this year itself. The last session of first day on 'Research on use of ICT in agriculture' was moderated by V.P.Sharma, Director, MANAGE, Hyderabad. Gopi N Ghosh, Assistant FAO Representative and

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Resource Person, Food and Nutrition Security Community discussed about knowledge management in food and agriculture, with example of functioning of UN Solution Exchange. 'Gramya Vikas: A Distributed Collaboration Model for Rural Development Planning' was the theme of the paper by J. Adinarayana, Gopesh Tewari and Anand Vadlamani from Agro-Informatics Lab, Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering, IIT Bombay; the paper was presented by J Adinarayana. V.P.Sharma presented his paper 'Cyber Extension: Innovative Uses of ICTs for Agriculture, Lessons from Case Studies'. During the question-answer session, suggestion were provided to make Krishi Vigyan Kendras (Agricultural Science Centres) in India more market oriented, ensuring more transparency of the finance spent for ICT projects in agriculture and initiating public monitoring for food security with the help of ICT. On the second day of the conference, there was a field trip to nearby KVK and sugarcane factory. Then the technical sessions were started. The first session was on 'Government and e-Agriculture: Government Support for e-Agriculture'. V.P.S.Sharma, Dean, College of Agribusiness Management, GB Pant University described the thrust agribusiness sectors and government initiatives in context of the State of Uttaranchal (India). T.C.Benjamin, IAS emphasized on the need of computerisation of land records and government support in this regard, with special reference to 'Mahabhulekh' project in Mumbai. Askar Abubakirov from Ministry of Agriculture, Kazakhstan, described the national projects set up by the regional network offices of his country. D.B.Deshmukh presented the status and potential of e-Agriculture in Maharashtra. M.Moni, DDG, NIC, New Delhi narrated the ICT dissusion for sustainable grassroots development in India. S.Sharma, Director, IASRI, New Delhi explained in his paper the ICT initiatives in IASRI. During the question answer session, the questions were raised regarding the reliability of the data from 'Mahabhulekh' on crop information. Benjamin explained the same. The second session of this day was on 'Corporate Experiences Trade Facilitation through ICT', the moderator of this session was Frida Youssel, Coordinator for UNCTAD (the UN's Conference on Trade and Development) finance and risk management commodities branch. The paper on 'Manobi' project of Senegal was presented by Malick Ndiaye. SPIC agribusiness was narrated by Narayanan, Head, Agribusiness, SPIC and trade practices in Canada was explained by Apurva Mehta, Senior Advisor, Trade, Consulate General of Canada, Mumbai. Meher Baburaj, Chief Operations Officer, NCDEX, highlighted National Commodity Development Exchange. Joseph Massey, Deputy Managing Director, MCX shared his experiences in trade facilitation through ICT. There was a discussion at the end on the security in transaction through Internet and also the future plan or possibility of opening rural kiosks by SPIC. 'The Power of Collaboration: Success Stories' was the theme of the last technical session. The vision of Agriwatch was presented by Meenakshi. Swetank Gupta, CEO, Gramdoot Seva Kendra explained the project 'Gramdoot' in Wardha District. Rural credit and supply chain management system was described by Rohit Nagotra, COO, Ekgaon Technologies, Sashi demonstrated the technicalities of the system. P.Krishna Reddy,z Head, e-Sagu Project, IIIT, Hyderabad and Ganesh Rao, Vice President, Moerheim Roses India Pvt Ltd also explained how the collaboration practices may serve the agriculture sector, sharing their experience in this field. At the last session, the report on 'Say Yes to Agribusiness' by Sharad Pawar and 'New Era of Economic Development Maharashtra' by the Union minister for Finance, India, P. Chidambaram were launched. The plenary session on the future of e-Agriculture was moderated by G.Chandrasekhar, Associate Editor of Business Line and Sharad Kulkarni. Addressing the plenary session, the Union Minister for Finance, India stressed on the need for technology bound development in farm sector at Baramati, Maharashtra. He identified five key components- water, credit, technology and market, required to transform the agrarian sector into a profitable exercise that will attract investments. Describing the current state of co-operative sector being in shambles, the finance minister expressed his confidence that all state governments will sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of Rs 14,500 crore scheme to revitalise the co-operative credit structure. Rana Kapoor, Managing Director and CEO of YES Bank presented the valedictory address. Saswati Paik, saswati@csdms.in

http://www.i4donline.net/articles/current-article.asp?articleid=639&typ=Rendezvous

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DNA, PUNE, India, 2006-03-20

Title :Interactive website takes IT harvest to farmers

Information from agricultural experts through an interactive website promises to serve as potent manure for farmers for a rich harvest. Farmers across rural India can now dig up relevant demand-driven farming knowledge via aAqua.org, an initiative of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay and its partners. From the website, Prasad Kaledhonkar got to know about the white patterns emerging on tomato plant leaves in Tamil Nadu. A farmer's daughter, Niyatee Nilesh of Thane, received advice on buying agricultural land, while Shirish from Maharashtra learnt about using waste water from the kitchen to irrigate gardens. The website provides crop recommendations through a crop-keyboard browser. It also contains a section called "crop doctor" that explains different crop diseases through photographs. The section "Bhav puchiye" (Ask the price) has practical use, as it displays market rates of different agricultural products from across India. "aAqua stands for almost all questions answered," says Krithi Ramamrutham, IIT-Bombay's head at the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology. "It used to be called Aqua. We added a small 'a' in front of it, that stands for 'almost'. We want to be as realistic as possible," he says. For the interactive website, IIT-Bombay has brought together diverse strands. It merged Indic text input, iconic (icon or picture-based) interfaces, meaning-based search, digital libraries, community forum, and water-quality sensors. The work required skills from diverse disciplines like e-pedagogy, multimedia content, computer-based training, education, and light databases. "aAqua can be deployed in any domain - education and health too. It's actually a very simple idea. You and I use it for discussing other things. Here, we need more images, multi-lingual capability, a query facility, and meaning-based search," the US-returned Ramamritham said in an interview. The aAqua.org shows up in Marathi, Hindi and English. It offers information also on crops, animals, officials' recommendations, market information and schemes for farmers. It has 940 members, 1,364 topics and 3,321 posts. "What we have done is signing up experts from various Krishi Vigyan Kendras (the network of farm-extension services in India)," says Ramamrutham. Anyone wanting the info can sign up through a simple process and ask. Those experts have been working in various parts of Maharashtra including Baramati, Pabal, Pune and Khed. Work on this first prototype began in November 2003. Oddly, it started just as a course project. "We started working on it in real earnest when we saw its full potential," says Ramamurtham. "We are now trying to scale up. Our challenge is that aAqua's reach should be larger," he adds. IIT-Bombay used its active natural language processing lab to design the website. "We try to get most of the language translated automatically, through an intermediate language (or artificial pivot language) known as UNL or universal networking language," adds Ramamrutham, who himself grew up in an agricultural village in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. Ramamrutham calls this a "great learning experience". But their work has also been recognized with the Manthan Award, an Indian prize for sites with useful content. "We are looking to go to deeper ways to use this technology. For instance, forecasting disease, going by census and other information. We want to enlarge its scope of applicability," he said. http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_interactive-website-takes-it-harvest-to-farmers_1018971

Linux Journal, Internet, 2006-03-24

Title :Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India

Editor's Note: This article has been updated since its original publication. Thanks to work done by the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Bombay) and its partners, IT-savvy and knowledge-hungry people across rural India now can find relevant, demand-driven farming knowledge on the aAqua.org Web site. So far, the site has been a great way to bring together people such as Prasad Kaledhonkar, who has a clue about what the white patterns emerging on tomato plant leaves are; farmer's daughter Niyatee

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Nilesh, who wants advice on buying agricultural land; and Shirish, from rural Maharashtra, who wants to learn about using waste water from the school kitchen to irrigate gardens and crops. aAqua stands for "Almost All Questions Answered". Dr. Krithi Ramamritham, IIT-Bombay's head at the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, said, "It used to be called Aqua. We added a small 'a' in front of it that stands for 'almost'. We want to be as realistic as possible." Dr. Krithi Ramamritham In addition to connecting users, aAqua.org also provides crop recommendations archived by keywords, a search tool to see if a particular question already has been answered and a "crop doctor" with photographs of diseased crops, archived by keywords. The bhav puchiye (ask the price) feature has practical use. Market rates from across India are displayed for farmers and agro-traders. The aAqua Web site contains several forums in Indian languages (Marathi and Hindi, currently) and in English. These forums deal with crops, animals, officials' recommendations, market information and schemes for farmers. The site now has 940 members, 1,364 topics and 3,321 posts. "What we've done is sign up experts from various Krishi Vigyan Kendras [the network of farm-extension services in India]", Ramamritham explained. Anyone wanting information can sign up through a simple process and start asking questions. The aAqua project has brought together some diverse groups. To build a solution that works in the field, IIT-Bombay merged Indic text input, iconic interfaces, meaning-based searches, digital libraries, community forums and water-quality sensors. This work brought together skills from a variety of disciplines, including e-pedagogy, multimedia content, computer-based training, education and light databases. The project members have been working in an area in the central Indian state of Maharashtra, around the Baramati, Pabal, Pune and Khed areas. Work on the first aAqua prototype began in November 2003. Interestingly, the project got its start in a school course. "We started working on it in real earnest when we saw its full potential", Ramamritham said. "We now are trying to scale up. Our challenge is aAqua's reach should be larger", he added. Tomcat, MySQL and mnvforum When asked if Free/Libre and open-source software made the aAqua project possible, Dr. Ramamritham said, "Very much so." The software behind the aAqua Web site is based on lab-developed algorithms for translation, caching and the like that use Java, JSP and Java Servlets technology. The application currently is deployed on a Tomcat Web server, version 5. The software also can run from any Servlet container that is compatible with JSP 1.2 and Servlet 2.3. The Oracle 9i database, with Unicode UTF-8 support, is used as the site's backend software. aAqua at Work aAqua also has been configured to work with MySQL, with Unicode support (version 4.1 onwards). aAqua can be viewed using any popular Web browser, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera and so on. The digital library software uses C++, Perl and Java and is deployed on a Jakarta Apache server, version 2.0.52. In addition, aAqua is built with mvnForum, a FLOSS-based discussion forum application. mvnForum, in turn, uses other FLOSS components, such as Lucene, an indexer and search engine; Tomcat; and many other components. Ramamritham said the team opted to use mvnForum because it is "easy to use, easy to set up" and offered the option of attaching files to a post, a fully customizable GUI. Among its attractive technical features are support for Unicode characters, which is "a must given India's multilingual orientation". In addition, the MVC architecture behind mvnForum also supports most popular databases, such as MySQL, Oracle 8i/9i, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, hsqldb, Interbase/Firebird, SAPDB, db2 and Sybase. "We wanted industrial strength support for databases as well as easy replicability, hence multiplatform support was essential" Ramamritham said. To deal with the many languages written and spoken in India, IIT-Bombay used its active natural language processing lab when working on the aAqua project. "We try to get most of the language translated automatically, through an intermediate language known as UNL, or universal networking language", Dr. Ramamritham explained. Overall, Ramamritham said the aAqua project has been a "great learning experience". The team's work has been presented with the Manthan Award, an Indian prize for Web sites having useful content. As for the future, Ramamritham said, "We're looking for deeper ways [of using] this technology, for instance, forecasting diseases by using sensor data and other information. We want to enlarge its scope of applicability." To this end, the project has received a request for information from the Development Gateway Foundation, which is interested in the possibility of building such portals for other countries. In addition, the government of

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Western India's Maharashtra region has linked the aAqua site to its own main page. As for other uses of the aAqua model, the metrology department of Pune, in central India, is interested in seeing what the model can do for the department. MarathiWorld.com is interested in using the aAqua model to answer career-counseling queries. And, Drishtee, a project in North India project, sees potential in this model being used for a citizens' complaints system. In short, the aAqua model can be used in a variety of disciplines. According to Dr. Ramamritham, "aAqua can be deployed in any domain--education and health too. It's actually a very simple idea."

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8938

Pune Newsline, Pune, India, 2006-06-19

Title :For afflicted farmers, solution is just a click away

A web portal developed by IIT Bombay addresses all the queries Express News Service Pune, June 18: In a village far away, farmer Vitthal Shinde was bogged down with a problem. His tomato crop has been affected by an unknown disease. But Shinde is far from worried. He simply heads to the nearest computer kiosk, and types in his query on a web-based forum. Within no time, his query is answered along with related pictures by experts from Baramati. This scenario is today a reality, thanks to aAQUA (almost All Questions Answered), a web portal initiated by Development Informatics Lab at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) in collaboration with Baramati-based Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Pabal-based Vigyan Ashram. The unique initiative was among a collection of entrepreneurs and NGOs who exhibited their work at the IIT Bombay Alumni Association meeting held on Saturday, which focused on Science and Technology for the Benefit of Society. Advertisement The highlight of all the exhibitions was the presentation of the Ashden award-winning Compact Biogas Plant by Priyadarshini Karve of the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI). Presentations were also made by RPS systems (energy-saving LED lamps), Pune Design Festival, Herbal Home Gardens, and event sponsors BMC Software. The Alumni meet also served as a platform to announce the IIT Alumni 2006 Global Conference, organised by Pan-IIT, an umbrella organisation of all IITs in India. To be held in Mumbai from December 23-25, the conference will veer around the theme Inspiring and involving IITians to transform India. The three-day conference is likely to be inaugurated by President Abdul Kalam, and will see around 20 eminent speakers like Larry Page, Steve Jobs and Sri Sri Ravisankar.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=188781

Mumbai News Line, Mumbai, India, 2006-11-12

Title :BRAINSTORMING- I At IIT, cutting edge ideas thatll change our lives in the future

At IIT, cutting edge ideas thatll change our lives in the future Research on to develop locket that warns of heart attack, hands-free cars and much more; focus now on marketing Mihika Basu Mumbai, November 11: Hands-free driving, a locket that alerts you of an imminent heart attack, energy from the sun and wind as a petrol substitute and earthquake-resistant buildings. These are only a few innovations that could make our lives that much easier if research scholars at Bombay IIT have their way. Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs word of caution that research projects at premiere institutes of excellence were not being converted into products may have put the scanner back on IITs cutting-edge quotient. But even as it combats adverse opinion on the effectiveness of its R&D programme, work is continuing on some key innovations, which if completed successfully, could change the paradigm of how we lead our lives in the future. Advertisement For instance, the silicon locket when worn by an individual, will make it possible to instantly monitor various cardiac parameters to help in quick diagnosis. In the event of the slightest abnormality, the locket is designed to send automatic alertsincluding the last few seconds of ECG data to a central server or the nearest hospital

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using a mobile phone interface. This will work like an instant life-saving device, said IIT Bombay R&D dean Krithi Ramamritham. Another project, which IIT feels will revolutionise the automotive sector, involves intelligent vehicles. Now being designed at IIT Bombay, these cars will be hands-free or drive-by-wire or brakes-by-wire vehiclesin addition to being hybrid as they will operate on a mixture of hydrogen or electricity and normal fuels. Our petrol reserves will be exhausted over the next 30 years and a major focus of our work is to develop alternate sources of energy, said Ramamritham. Consequently, sustainable energy and alternatives to fossil fuels like energy from sun, wind and water are also being worked upon at the institute. During his recent visit to the institute, the Prime Minister expressed his dissatisfaction at the fact that research projects at institutes like IIT Bombay were getting restricted to papers instead of being converted into substantial products. The PMs statement has been an eye-opener for us, said the dean. Lack of proper marketing is responsible for closing down important research projects. We are going to focus on marketing in a big way now. Moreover, our society still thinks that anything made abroad is better than what is developed in India. Another major thrust area for the institute is the use of communication technology for the socio-economic growth of farmers. A multi-lingual question-answer system called aAQUA, which has been functioning for more than a year now, is a significant step in that direction. Its a community forum for delivering information at the grassroots level and includes videos, pictures and images for non-literate and semi-literate people, explained Ramamritham. Research is also on for a seismic risk assessment of Mumbai to estimate the extent of damage to life and property in the event of an earthquake or flood so that suitable disaster management measures can be planned. The institute, which gets Rs 40 crone for basic research and Rs 12 crore for consultancy (company-specific) research, claims most these projects will be complete within the next five years. We at IIT are looking at long-term solutions instead of shortcuts, Ramamritham added. TOMORROW: At IIT, good ideas turn into good business

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=209247

The Hindu Business Line, Chennai, 2007-01-22

Title :Say it in your own lingo

The unique features of the Brahmi Input Method are: it is based on the way all Indian languages are taught a top vowel row with consonants in sets below; the Matra key is used for the vowel signs and the Halant key for halfconsonants. COMMUNICATE, with local flavour - K.K. Mustafah Words come alive in our mother tongue. There are those expressions, phrases, metaphors that sound right only in the language of our town. Now you will be able to type that exact saying while writing an e-mail, with a keyboard designed for Indians. Based on the ancient script of Brahmi, the keyboard is being designed for the 95 per cent of Indians who don't know English. This keyboard can be modified to cater to 40 or so modern Indian languages. Descendants of the Brahmi alphabet include: Bengali, Devanagiri, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Khmer, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu and Tibetan. A US-based company, Kalibonca LLC, has acquired the rights to license the Brahmi Keyboard, Brahmi Phone Keypad and other input methods based on the Brahmi Layout. Several companies, including Reliance Communications ADAGroup, are evaluating the product for sale to millions of Indians, according to the firm. "We believe that the Brahmi Input method is the key to cracking the Indian language market as all Indians understand the Brahmi input method intuitively," says a spokesperson. Invented by Dr Mahesh Jayachandra, the Brahmi keyboard has been licensed by the company. Kalibonca is currently tying up with computer makers, keyboard vendors and kiosk makers. This will be useful when rural broadband connectivity is established and villagers look to the Internet to solve their daily problems. IIT Mumbai's aAqua (almost All QUestions Answered) project, for example, will receive a boost once these keyboards are in use. The project brings online experts together to solve questions posed by rural denizens. Most problems are crop-related and the questions are asked in Hindi/Marathi, said Prof Krithi Ramamritham,

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Dean of R&D, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, speaking at a telecom event in Bangalore recently. Queries have been received from all parts of India from the North-East, Kerala and Maharashtra. According to the experts who designed this, the villagers are unable to articulate their thoughts using the input devices commonly available. Hence the project uses multimedia images instead of text, to elaborate on the question. Such a keyboard will boost the amount of content coming from rural India. This will mean more literature in local languages on the Web what Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, egged Indians to upload. There are around 3,000 to 10,000 articles in Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and Kannada, with the number of Kannada articles growing at 22 per cent per month and Bengali ones at 35 per cent. There were only 1,000 articles in Hindi on Wikipedia. Mobile phone to rescue Meanwhile, mobile phones are also racing into villages and alleviating the economic situation there. With keypads in local languages, mobile users in rural India will have power at their fingertips. C-DAC, Motorola, Infosys and W3C are working on realising this. "We are focussing on licensing the technology to cell-phone providers," says the Kalibonca spokesperson. The unique features of the Brahmi Input Method are: it is based on the way all Indian languages are taught a top vowel row with consonants in sets below; the Matra key is used for the vowel signs and the Halant key for halfconsonants. Also, the keyboard can be bilingual the user can shift between English and Hindi as required. Once these various technologies, companies and institutes achieve success, it will spell hope for the rural folk. Hope for better expression, communication and growth. preethij@thehindu.co.in

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2007/01/22/stories/2007012200150400.htm

Telegraph UK, Delhi, India, 2007-12-10

Title :Text message helpline for Indian farmers

By Peter Foster in New Delhi Published: 4:18PM GMT 10 Dec 2007 Embattled Indian farmers facing the threat of drought, pestilence and cyclonic storms are turning to mobile telephones to give them advance warning of livelihood-threatening disasters which could lie ahead. Although much of Indian agriculture still relies on the bullock and the buffalo, the use of mobile phones to warn of dangers and share market information is promising to revolutionise life for many. In a scheme set up by Indias equivalent of Oxbridge - the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai - farmers are using SMS messages to receive alerts and ask questions of experts and colleagues. Called "aAQUA" - short for "almost all questions answered" - the scheme enables farmers to enquire about everything from projected rainfall patterns, disease forecasts for plants and animals and to how to milk buffaloes more efficiently. More than 100m new mobiles are sold in India every year and in Indias rural areas - where 65 per cent of the population still live - the mobile is changing life far quicker than the internet which connects less than 4 per cent of the population. "We realised that the internet is not penetrating as fast as we thought," said the Dean of IIT Mumbai, Krithi Ramamritham, "while recent mobile phone penetration is high in rural areas, so we decided to make use of this phenomenon." It is hoped that the service will ease the plight of many distressed Indian farmers who, according to a recent Indian government report, commit suicide at a rate of one every 34 minutes because of debts, crop failures and other problems. The service receives a wide range of questions from the "rates for cucumbers in Kolapur market" to advice on building cow barns and request for "a list of Indian exporters for stevia", a herb used as a sugar substitute. Typical was the query from a Mr Gaju Lambhade, a small farmer in Maharashtra: "Sir. Will it be good to use milking machine for milking 10 Buffaloes? In future I will be increasing the number of buffaloes. Which make of milking machine is good and what will be the approximate cost of it?" And back comes the reply, complete with a list of suppliers for milking machines, some advice on which machines were the best quality and a warning that cow milking machines need to be adapted with special teats to work on buffaloes. The schemes pioneers believe its potential is limitless and say they are already in talks with an Indian mobile handset manufacturer to construct a phone with special features just for farmers.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1572129/Text-message-helpline-for-Indian-farmers.html

Indian Express, Mumbai, 2007-12-10

Title :Crop problems? Farmers can text IIT Bombay for answers

When disease strikes their crops, dont be surprised if farmers in Maharashtra fish out their cellphones and start punching out an SMS. Chances are they are messaging IIT, Bombay for answers. In a step forward from its multi-lingual web portal aAQUA (almost all questions answered), which answers agriculture and animal husbandry-related questions, IIT-Bombay has now put in place a software where registered farmers can have their queries answered on a mobile phone without having to go to a kiosk or cyber-cafe. We realised that the Internet is not penetrating as fast as we thought. Also recent numbers indicate that the rate of rise of mobile phone penetration is higher in rural areas. So we decided to make use of this phenomenon to reach out to maximum number of farmers, says IIT-B Research and Development Dean Krithi Ramamritham. In initial research, the institute determined how many agricultural households had access to Internet connection, the type of mobiles they possessed, the functions they used in a cellphone and the kind of information they needed. One of the findings, for example, was that while a vast majority of farmers in the state used mobile phones, the grape farmers owned the high-end ones

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/crop-problems-farmers-can-text-iit-bombay-for-answers/248582/

IBN Live, Mumbai, India, 2007-12-30

Title :Farmers hook on to the net to reap a rich harvest

Mumbai: IITians are helping farmers find answers to their crop problems. And they do this with SMSes. Standing in the middle of his vineyard with a laptop in hand, 30-year-old Sandeep Khode is perhaps the face of the new techno-savvy Indian farmer, who gets expert agricultural advice by posting queries online at www.aaqua.org. "This site helps me get good advice and is also a great way to keep a tab on the market," says Sandeep Khode, a grape farmer. A Brainchild of IIT Bombay, aaqua (Almost All Questions Answered) does just what its name suggests, with advice on everything from how to improve your crop to tips on marketing the produce. "The idea was to bridge the technological divide, says Prof Krithi Ramamritham, Dean, R&D, IIT Bombay. Farmers can register on the website free of charge. They can then post their queries in English, Hindi or Marathi. Experts at the agricultural universities answer the queries. They can even text their queries to the number 56767666. The website also has a handy database of frequently asked questions. With nearly 4000 registered users, farmers from across the country have been logging into a whole new kind of Green Revolution.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/farmers-log-in-to-get-eadvice-on-agri-issues/55266-11.html

EuroIndiaICT, IISC, Bangalore, 2008-11-11

Title :Euro India ICT

Krithi Ramamritham, Dean of R&D, IIT Bombay expresses his views on the EuroIndia ICT Project at a EuroIndia Information Day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uVervLgUfk

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Summary of Q&A

aAQUA Success Story Video Interview. (page no. 31)

The below video was shot on Dec 6, 2009 at Mumbai and Mr.Shashi Kumar Yadav a registered aAQUA user was interviewed. Mr.Shashi Kumar has interacted with experts since 2006 and discussed about setting up a dairy business. His family was convinced in six months about the progress he made and he is now shifting back to his home town in state of Rajasthan and expanding his dairy business along with Vermicompost generation and distribution.

His story is one among the success stories of people effectively using aAQUA forum and becoming successful in the field of agriculture.

http://www.agrocom.co.in/video.php

Market Study (page no. 32)

1. Which is more profitable business - Forum Q&A # 14223

In this Q&A, the user wants to get a clear idea as to which business he wants to start, so the expert explains him about the poultry business as well as dairy farming so that he is prepared before he gets into his new project. Also, some of the good practices which needs to adapted in dairy business is provided by the expert.

Training Related Q&A (page no. 34)

2. I am interested in about training - Forum Q&A # 3259.

In this Q&A, the farmer is interested to start cattle farming and is on look out for information about available KVK's in state of Gujarat. Expert responds to him with the list of KVK's and the one nearest to him, also expert offers to provide training which is held in his KVK Baramati as well.

National Research Center Related Q&A (page no. 36)

3. Grape Rootstock - Forum Q&A # 5256

In this Q&A, the user is asking a particular grape to be grown in a particular type of soil and the expert is answering about some varieties of grapes which can be grown in any soil. Also, he is referring the user to visit the National Research Center for Grapes for more information.

Pesticide Related Q&A (page no. 37)

4. Lady finger - Forum Q&A # 14413

In this Q&A, the farmer is interested in growing lady finger and he wants more information. One expert provides him with all the information regarding seed preparation, land preparation, sowing, optimum temperature, seasons to sow along with diseases and pest information. The other expert joins in and provides various seeds available and how to manage pests, which fertilizer to be used. This is an example of collaboration between experts.

Seed Related Q&A (page no. 39)

27

Summary of threads (Success story / Discussion thread) continued

5. About papaya - Forum Q&A # 2291

In this Q&A, it is initiated by a Marketing manager of a seed company in Delhi, a farmer from Andhra Pradesh is delighted to grow more such exotic crops and inquires more. The expert comes in and provides him additional details of approaching agricultural service center, also he provides the various information about how to start right from preparation of sowing bed to disease management including site selection. Information about how to market Papaya milk is also provided. There are several seed related questions on aAQUA. Some KVKs have used aAQUA Mobile to promote events selling seeds and saplings - the targeted promotion has consistently helped increase the participation in these events.

Animal Cure Related Q&A (page no. 43)

6. Vigyan Ashram Goat Story - Q&A # 920

In this Q&A, there is goat which is bitten by dogs and the local veterinarian is not available. So a question on aAQUA is put and followed up over the phone. The expert is thus able to reply immediately, instructions are followed and the Goat is saved. So in real time, aAQUA has helped save a life - there are several other animal and animal-rearing related queries on aAQUA.

Banks and Loan Related Q&A (page no. 45)

7. About Loan - Forum Q&A # 14416

In this Q&A, the user wants to buy agricultural land and is on the look out for the information. The expert provides the information about the local NABARD (Rural Bank which specializes in lending to farmers and also guides farmers on smart investing) office where he can locally contact for further information.

Marketing Related Q&A (page no. 46)

8. Broiler Farm Marketing - Forum Q&A # 10267

In this Q&A, the farmer wants to sell his birds directly to market, as he is making losses by selling to middlemen, so he inquires about the available markets. The expert provides with list of market and thus helps him out to sell in the market directly.

Animal Husbandary Related Q&A (page no. 47)

9. Cost of Jersey and Hallstone cows - Forum Q&A # 2659

In this Q&A, the user is asking which breed of cow to be used to start his dairy farm. The expert requests him to gather local market data, its demand and other things. Along with it, the expert also offers the user to visit their KVK to learn more about dairy farming patterns in Maharashtra and learn before he actually begins the project. This way aAQUA has been useful to several entrepreneurs in clearing their basic questions and doubts. See one of our users talk about how his dreams of a dairy came to reality here:

Crop Information (page no. 51)

10. Crop Adaptability - Forum Q&A # 5977.

In this Q&A, a progressive farmer is excited about entering into a new crop - China Garlic in Maharashtra. The expert warns against this plan, he is advised

28

Summary of threads (Success story / Discussion thread) continued

to grow something else (though the expert here didn't suggest an alternative - this would have been better) as it would be a failure due to climatic conditions in his region. This particular Q&A demonstrates how farmers use aAQUA to reach out to the online aAQUA community to ask questions while trying (or even before trying as in this case) their own experiments.

Fertilizer Related Q&A (page no. 53)

11. Conversion Factor - Forum Q&A # 14135

In this Q&A, the farmer is inquiring about the conversion factor and wants to calculate how much of fertilizer and which proportion if he buys, he can provide the best nutrients to the plants. The expert clearly explains the ration proportion by giving example of NPK proportion and its equivalent in percentage and to quantify in Kilograms. Experts usually avoid scientific jargon e.g. measurements are made in teaspoons as against parts-per-million.

Disease Related Q&A (page no. 54)

12. Onion Information - Forum Q&A # 12418

In this Q&A, the user is expecting more information about Onion, the expert delivers comprehensive information about onion-growing, probable diseases which can affect the crop and how to take care of it.

Disease Related Q&A (page no. 56)

13. cucumber - Forum Q&A # 922

In this Q&A, the farmer is experiencing disease in his cucumber farm and has tried medications based on seed company representative which yields no good result. He then poses question in aAQUA and then he follows the instruction provided by experts and recovers his entire crop. This Q&A demonstrates how experts can save farmer's livelihood and in turn it is a success story.

Harvest and Stumps Related Q&A (page no. 61)

14. HARVESTING HYBRID NAPIER RBN-13 VARIETY - Forum Q&A # 13703

In this Q&A, the farmer is inquiring about the Hybrid Napier and is not sure as to whether to sow Napier RBN-13 seeds or use stumps. The expert provides him the right answer and also directs him with the seasonal requirements for better harvest of Napier.

Training Related Q&A (page no. 63)

15. Agril cources - Forum Q&A # 14337

In this Q&A, the user is inquiring about various advanced agricultural courses available, so that he will guide his brother to do so. The expert clearly indicates what are the various programs available under Govt. Of India and NABARD, so that one can take Extension work as well and be an entrepreneur. Also, he provides valuable information such as availability of loan, subsidy, interest exemption etc.,

Loan Related Q&A (page no. 64)

16. Loan for dairy farm in Karnataka - Forum Q&A # 14346

29

Summary of threads (Success story / Discussion thread) continued

In this Q&A, the farmer wants to start a Dairy farm and is in need of loan, one experts provides him a list of Nationalized banks and the other experts provides him, the address of the nearest bank which is available at his village and guides him to meet the manager.

Seeds Related Q&A (page no. 66)

17. Lemon variety - Forum Q&A # 14499

In this Q&A, the farmer wants to grow Lemon and is inquiring more about available seed varieties. The expert provides him with a matrix of information from which he can select and suggests him to get local Agriculture expert advise as well.

Animal Related Q&A (page no. 68)

18. Nellore or Deccani sheep - Forum Q&A # 14233

In this Q&A, the farmer is trying to get answers as to which breed of sheep farming would be profitable for his business. The experts clearly answers the question and asks him to follow some best practices and key things to be considered for making it a profitable business. Also, the experts provides various links to other websites - a common trend in aAQUA to connect users to other sources of information on the web.

Unlike some Q&A Websites where the Q&A are private and can only be retrieved by the user who posed the query, aAQUA queries are always online by default. The advantage is visibility, transparency and searchablility. The down-side is that - since posts are public by default - spam posts may be online for 24 hours (more on rare instances) till they are removed by the moderator.

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agrocom

aAQUA Advertising andCustomer Service

PowaiMaharashtra

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pbhayya

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Dear sir,

my self Prakash from bidar karnataka

i want to start business in my home town chitguppa bidar district karnataka

actuly i am confused bitween the starting a firm of dairy or goat or poultry firms.

i want to know which is the best safe and nore porfitable business amoung this three

but in future i will start this three also but i want to know which one start 1st

plz sugest which business give more profit with less expenses and less risk

[Nov 10, 2009 11:58:39 AM] [220.227.91.226] santoshpapal

MemberAkole

MaharashtraIndia

Joined: Mar 17, 2007 Posts: 22

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Dear Prakash,Its on ur interestFirst you should think on present assets and inputs available with you. Also milk, meatand egg market availability near ur village.If u have some 1 ha land u can have dairy business first. but the establishment cost willbe much. Also maintenance is more incase of Poultry and Goat. Still think on availabilityand interest.----------------------------------------Santosh A Papal9923796430

[Nov 10, 2009 12:59:28 PM] [124.247.241.226] Weather Info baramati

Certifed ExpertBaramati, Pune Dist

MaharashtraIndia

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Mr .Prakash Bhayya :-Please go through following points for all the above fims like firm of dairy or goat orpoultry firms etc:-Whichever is the business, want to become profitable needs following things (Dairy/poultry/goat point of view):-1)Quality animals:- Animals which can sustain in perticular climatic conditions & havingproper dairy character needed for dairy business.Eg- In Konkan region, there is highrainfall in rainy season and drought situation on summer season.so the kind of animalswhich are suitable for this region may be Jersey cows,Surti & Mehsana buffaloes.2)Management- As the production of animal is increases according to high qualityanimals demand for good quality fodder,concentrate,water,housing and care is needed

Joined: Dec 1, 2003 Posts: 9901

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Expert Name: Dr.D.P.Bhoite

Phone Number:02112-255207

more .If this is not fulfilled ,then dairy owner can have a loss in terms of less milkproduction as well as economic losses.So it is necessary for dairy owner to access hisstrength for providing this kind of facilities for its animals.So for that if dairy owner hasgood kind of knowledge (By training & practice)and will to do whatever work in his dairyfarm,then he can be profitable dairy farmer.As per my knowledge this is 24 hoursbusiness & it can not be as supervisor's job.3)Facilities:- Whatever facilities required for dairy like availability of farmland,availability of fodder throughout the year,availability of veterinarian,skill for firstaid treatment,skill for feed formulation is important for dairy farmer.Dairy owner mustprovide minimum kind of facilities which are needed for his animals.4)Market- Before producing milk or other dairy product,it is better to search what aremarket opprtunities in your area.See if there is no any dairy farm functioning in yoursrea what are the resions behind it?If there is no any farmer who dare to take thisentreprice then it is opportunity to you set up good quality of dairy farm.If market is notthere ,try to create your own market by creating demand for your product in themarket.5)Value addition- In business of dairy farming,it is better to not to rely on only oneentreprise or product eg- Milk,If you do value addition in milk to prepareKhoa,Shrikhand,basundi etc.,You will get more money,If you do value addition incowdung by preparing vermicompost you will get more money .So think on this aspect, Do personal visits for survey the area,try to find out market aswell as study market chains developed in that perticular area.Then make decision fordairy farming .6)To be updated- For dairy owner it is necessary to aware about new practices &changes in dairy farming.So for that he must take training before starting the dairy orany animals related enterprise & after that timely necessary trainings to becomeupdated .New practices,trends & changes in management will be helpfult to reduce thelosses & improve production of animals.He must be adaptive & positive in nature &willing to take responcibilities or change as & when needed.7) Keep records- Some farmers which do not have land but are successfully run dairybusiness because they keep records for feed,fodder,Milk production,Reproduction,health& management aspects.In which they can get ideas as well as point our problematicpoints or situatuation to avaiod losses.Today,many dairy farmers are not keepingrecords as like businessman,so they do know what is the status of the dairy /poultry/goatary they are running now.On the above points,you may decide number of animals to be kept for dairy farmingwhich can run sucessfully.Alos visit to nearest dairy farmsrs which are running theirfarms very well & then share the ideas with them for runing successfuldairy/poultry/goat farm.

[Above information is based on recommendations from National Agriculture Research System. TheEffectiveness of the recommendations varies from place to place with changes in natural resource andclimate. Farmers are advised to use the information on their own responsibility. KVK Baramati shall not beresponsible for any consequences.]----------------------------------------[Edit 1 times, last edit by baramati at Nov 13, 2009 12:32:31 PM]

[Nov 13, 2009 12:31:09 PM] [First IP: 144.16.122.1 - Last IP: 144.16.122.1] Weather Info

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kiranmodi

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Edit this Post i m intrested about training for farming reply sir,gujarat main kvk kaha hai.agar hum cattle,buffelo,horse farming ka course karna cahte hai to kaha kare.kya hum aapke vaha aake yeh sub course kar sakte hai.modi kiranahmedabadgujarat[Jun 24, 2006 4:03:04 PM]

baramati

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Edit this Post Re: i m intrested about training for farming reply - Total No of KVKs in Gujrath State- 17- Under SAU (State Agriculture University) - 11 kvk- State Govt./ Undertaking/ Educational Institution - 2 kvk- Under NGOs - 4 kvk

- .. . ... .Krishi Vigyan KendraAhmedabad C/o JunagadhAgricultural University,Junagadh (Gujrath)

- , , [, . . [ - [ . - - 02112-255207, ... 9850980103- .- , , 12 022-24130162, 24137030[Jul 14, 2006 10:48:14 AM] Weather Info

kiranmodi

MembersatelliteGujaratIndia

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Edit this Post Re: i m intrested about training for farming reply sir,thank you vary much!main aap ke waha catle farming,buffelo farming,goat farming ka course cahta hoo.duration,fees ki detail main phone se jan lunga.

Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 47

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thank sir.

[Jul 14, 2006 5:29:31 PM]

baramati

Certifed ExpertBaramati, Pune Dist

MaharashtraIndia

Joined: Dec 1, 2003 Posts: 9901

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Expert Name: Mr.PrasadKaledhonkar

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Edit this Post Re: i m intrested about training for farming reply you are welcome.

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sampatrao

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Which root stock are recommended for calcirus soil (Soil with high calcium i.e local name"CHUNKHADI") for Grape growing

Awating for your reply

Regards

Sampatrao

[Jan 24, 2007 3:28:06 PM] baramati

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Edit this Post Re: Grape Rootstock reply sampatrao,

National Research Centre for Garapes has recommended dogridge-B rootstock for indianconditions, it has good results in various types of soils. NRC has developed some normsregarding soil conditions for use of this rootstock.All details about use of rootstock accoring to soil condition is available on NRC's website.Please click on link given below.

http://nrcgrapes.nic.in/

[Jan 25, 2007 3:34:16 PM] Weather Info

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bunty

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MaharashtraIndia

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Edit this Post Lady fingure reply

Dear Sir,

I am residing at Akola district of vidarbha region, i would like to know the package ofpractices of Bhendi Lady finger, perticulary pest and disease and use of PGR in Bhendi.

[Nov 26, 2009 10:12:25 AM] Weather Info baramati

Certifed ExpertBaramati, Pune Dist

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Edit this Post Re: Lady fingure reply

Bhendi can be grown in a wide range of soils. However, it grows best inloose, friable, well-drained sandy loam soils rich in organic matter. It alsogives good yield in heavy soils with good drainage. A pH r