Warna Nagar, a cluster of 70 villages in Maharashtra is a central eye of the "Wired Villages" project. In 1960, a visionary like Tahasaheb Kore propagated the idea of co-operatives in Warna Nagar, as a method of achieving socio-economic development.
Sugarcane is major crop of this area and most of the sugar production of the two districts Kolhapur and Sangli is processed at this Society. From each village 200 - 300 farmers are registered as society members.
The project area is a cluster of 70 villages consisting of 46 villages from Kolhapur and 24 villages from Sangli districts of Maharashtra.
This project has been initiated to serve the information needs on different crop cultivation practices of major crops, sugarcane cultivation practices, pest and disease control, marketing information, dairy and sugarcane processing information etc. to the farmers, right up to their village level.
The Computer Booths are serving as information centers for the farmers in their villages. The computer booth is operator by the booth operator and he is the main linkage between the farmers and information gateway center. The information sought relates to crops cultivation practices, land development, pesticides, diseases control details, marketing details, bills payments positions of sugarcane and dairy etc. Currently forty-six computer booths are functioning in Kolhapur and meeting the information needs of the farmers. In remaining 24 villages of Sangli district, computer booths and hardware was setup, and are waiting to link to Central Server Station.
Apart from information retrieval, there are two client-based applications, to serve the farmers needs. They are (1) Dairy Information System (2) Sugarcane Information System.
In Dairy Information System, the information on all the farmers, who are part of the dairy system is maintained. Other details available to members of the dairy cooperatives include the quantity of milk supplied by each farmer, fat content, their billing information and credit details etc. This information is maintained and updated at the central database on daily basis.
In Sugarcane Information System, information on shareholders is maintained. About 200-350 shareholders are there in each village for sugar cane crop. This system maintains the details of the cultivation schedule, quantity harvested and supplied to the society, deductions effected by the Society towards credit, net income due to the farmers is available with respect to each shareholder.
Every village is also linked with the Directorate of Marketing in Pune, which facilitates farmers in getting information on rates of vegetables, fruits and other crops.
The computer booths are provided with a Pentium II computer having 64 MB ram, 2 GB hard disk, printer and a UPS power backup system. A dial-up connectivity with a modem and telephone line has been used to connect the main computer center to retrieve the information, send the queries, grievances to the central server station. The speed of dial-up connection is around 19200 BPS to 28000 BPS and average connectivity time is about 10 seconds. Telephone charge of around Rs. 350/-, is paid by village level society.
Booth operators of Paragoam, Bhairwadi, Kuralap and Panhala informed that an average of 20-25 farmers visit the computer booths every day for information on crop cultivation practices and disease control, marketing, dairy and sugarcane billing details etc.
| IIT Bombay | KReSIT | People at KReSIT | Faculty |