IDEA - Self-reliant and Digital India will only be realized by taking along the agriculture sector
The government’s latest initiative- IDEA – the ‘India Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture’ is trying to bring change at scale in agriculture sector.
It will incorporate a National Farmers Database, for farmers which will enable anyone with access to the database to uniquely identify a landholder, know the extent of his holding, the state of the soil, cropping patterns and average yields and other useful information at a granular level.
Objectives of IDEA:
To create the agriculture equivalent of the ‘India Stack’.
- A set of APIs, that allows governments, businesses, start-ups, and developers to utilise a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s problems towards, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
To use these technologies to offer proactive and personalized services to farmers, increase their income, and improve the efficiency of the agriculture sector.
To develop “evidence based” policy for the agriculture sector, driven by big data and analytics to deliver seamless credit and insurance services, information related to seeds, fertilizers, pesticides.
Features of IDEA:
The database, is built by Microsoft under the Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare (DoAFW), will include farmers’ digitised land records, and cross-linked with the Aadhaar database.
It will take information from schemes like the PM Kisan, the national crop insurance scheme, PM Fasal Bima Yojna.
By cross-linking with Aadhaar and linking it with the land records database, a unique FID, or a farmers’ ID, is sought to be created.
- With the FID, a user can get one-click access to virtually the entire universe of a farmer’s activities.
The FID will lie at the base of this vast superstructure of services. It would enable ‘single sign-on’ for access to all government services offered to farmers.
From PMKISAN scheme direct benefit transfers, to soil health cards, extension services such as plant and crop health information, weather alerts and forecasts at a granular, farm-level, to enabling farmers to access credit, the Agri stack will deliver all the relevant information.
Market information and price forecasts will help farmers plan their production better and manage better realizations.
The ‘agristack’, will help in achieving the goal of doubling farmers’ income.
Concerns regarding India’s land records:
1. Lack of Composite land records
With more than 14 crore working farms, India’s land records in general and rural, agricultural land records, are a Byzantine mess.
According to some estimates, about 12 per cent of agricultural households operated on leased land, they are tenant farmers.
- States like UP, Bihar, W Bengal, Telangana, etc. Recording higher levels of tenancy, close to 30 per cent.
- Most of these tenant farmers are also small farmers, falling within the most vulnerable group.
FID scenario will completely exclude them from all benefits, subsidies, credit, and extension services, since they will not figure in the database.
- Any database will be useless without covering and recognizing tenancy.
2. Exclusion from records
Three quarters of the full-time labour on a farm are women. A substantial portion of small landholdings and tenant farms are managed by women.
In India, land titles continue to be held by men. Even when there are men in a family with multiple sons, leaves out the others from any records-based benefit or service.
Similar concerns exist for dairy, poultry, and fish farmers, as well as gatherers of forest produce, predominantly tribals.
Concerns associated with Agristack
The Agristack is the precursor to a complete privatisation of government services extended to agriculture.
The Agriculture Ministry has already signed MoUs for pilot projects:
- With Amazon for creating the ‘start-ups ecosystem’ for apps to be created using all the data in Agristack
- With Patanjali for creating precision farm management solutions using the Internet of Things.
- With ESRI for creating Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions for satellite-based farmer information.
The government had not disclosed these MoUs till the Internet Freedom Foundation filed a public protest.
Data Privacy is also a big concern. Giving away the sensitive, financial and landholding information in the absence of a data privacy law raises multiple concerns over potential misuse.
- There have been many Aadhaar-related problems, which the government has either denied or steamrollered.
Suggestions
- There should be a legal recognition of land tenancy agreements in India, with most agreements tending to be formal nature.
- Small and tenant farmers required a good financial assistance form the Government.
- Since a substantial portion of small landholdings and tenant farms are managed by women, they should be included in the legal formalities in order to get necessary benefits.
- Government must impose a strong data privacy law in order to keep sensitive, financial and landholding information safe.
- With the implementation of technology to solve agriculture problems, issues like the digital divide and privacy must be addressed.
The current farmers’ agitation is restricted to a few States and larger problems. But any thoughtless attempt to ram through digital Rajya will light farm fires which may prove too hot to handle. The government would do well to tread cautiously.
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