Rural Information Kiosk-Taking IT to farmers for sustainable management of groundwater resources

an FAO initiativeMani K. A. S, Rao P. S and Govardhan Das S. V

Widening divide in accessing Information Technology

• Information Technology in rural India is largely for use by young essentially male

• Use of IT restricted to limited comfort zones

• People from disadvantaged groups precluded from IT led developments

• IT not able to compete with the formal medium of communication in rural areas

• IT impact limited to young and mobile group in rural areas keen to migrate to urban areas

• Information Technology Divide has widened due to legacy of caste and class issues.

New initiatives in using IT for sustainable management of groundwater

• FAO-APFAMGS has taken fruits of IT growth to rural India as a tool for establishment of a natural resource information knowledge-base

• Community involved in technical data collection on their own related to– Rainfall– Surface Runoff– Groundwater Levels– Groundwater Pumping– Groundwater Quality– Individual Farmer Level Crop Plans– Computation of Water Balance for Hydrological Unit

• Data collected by farmers systematically stored in log books and disseminated to community using display boards

• Log book data organized in computerized Habitation Resources Information System (HRIS) data base,

• Computerized data transferred to Information Kiosk for access and use by farmers in decision making related groundwater resources management.

Initiating farmers to IT arena

• Incorporation of Non Formal Education tools and provides easy entry for first generation IT learners into an otherwise exclusive club.

• Data base and Kiosk with their simple friendly design make farmers handle technology with ease.

• Concept of participative data collection by rural communities provides sense of ownership and IT offers a medium to appreciate the data with ease

• Community initiative strengthens local institutions and brings on center stage common concerns on emerging water crisis especially on groundwater.

• Information Kiosk, integrates Information Technology, GIS, World Wide Web and communication tools

• Science of Hydrology demystified using NFE tools leading to proper understanding of local water resource availability.

Habitation Ressources Information System (HRIS)

• Habitation Resources Information System (HRIS) a customized store house of data collected by farmers organized in computerized format.

• Data entry carried out in rural surroundings by partner NGO supporting community in data collection and data organization.

• HRIS strong on technical specs, amenable for tough rural situations by non computer literates

• Runs on standard Windows Platform, developed utilizing the MS-Access database on the Visual Basic platform.

• Design is modular with number of independent modules seamlessly integrated.

• Incorporates number of data validation tools, provides pre-defined as well as user defined customized reports and graphs

Demystify GIS

• Developed farmer friendly GIS outputs integrated with Remote Sensing technology for accessing information about individual and shared resources without external facilitators.

• Provide farmers new insight on their natural resource base bothin space and time

• Enable community on tough decision making with regard to natural resource management by individual farmers for collective good

• GIS data enabled through “Information Kiosk".

• GIS, Remote Sensing enable farmers to visualize individual and collective resources through individual layers as well as integrated multi thematic maps.

Disseminating community initiatives on Demand Side Groundwater Management using dedicated Web Site (www.apfamgs.org)

Information Kiosk• Information Kiosk, is a facility for rural communities to examine the data

they collected in different graphical forms and tables.

• Kiosk plays a catalytic and enabling role in ensuring sharing of data by the community and outside world.

• Kiosk provides an opportunity to the rural communities to use IT tools in decision making related to groundwater use and cropping system changes.

• Kiosk is totally touch screen driven (no physical keyboard) with large icons displaying limited but focused data supported by graphics and animations.

• Local language is used (though the system has multi-lingual capability) and has very simple and clear navigational paths.

• Hardware is state of the art high end specs insulated from the users.

• Kiosk is compatible with other applications ,stores large data base performs advanced computations, while displaying only essentials information.

Future Role• Make available the fruits of advanced modeling capabilities within the reach of

farmers

• Use modeling tools for short/long term agriculture planning

• Build partnership between farmers and researchers.

• Build advanced model with inputs from the data collected by farmers.

• Model calibration and verification of the model through partnership of farmers and researchers

• Model queries would prioritize farmers concerns on short term and long term groundwater development strategies.

• Factor in global concerns on climate change and related issues with current dayaconcerns.

• Inter-phase to translate farmer queries to the model as well as l bring to the user the response of the model.

• Information Kiosk will be output device presenting answers to queries through animations and graphics.

email: plapfamgs@sify.comwww.apfamgs.org

Thank You