Telesupport Experiment for Agricultural Information Management in West Bengal, India

Abstract

Apparently less important issues like people’s participation, gender, capacity building and sustainability are often more important than the technicalities of the communication in ICT4D projects. Change Initiatives, an Indian NGO of tried an innovative mechanism of agricultural information management to facilitate two-way interaction between expert and farmers of West Bengal, India. In spite of initial success in terms of people’s participation and magnitude of information created & exchanged, the project could not achieve sustainability in the long run. Despite of its failure it has been successful in empowering grassroot people, especially the Muslim women of the project area.