Community Information Service to Enhance Information Literacy and Develop Local

Knowledge Bank for Agrarian Community of India: A Perspective View

Moumita AshLibrarian, Vidyasagar College for Women

&Prof. Pijushkanti Panigrahi

Department of Library & Information Science, University of CalcuttaIASLIC 30th All India Conference 2015

on Library Legislation and Community Information Services

28th-31st December,2015

Agrarian Community

Agrarian community is related with the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.

As their live hood is bonded with nature as well society, the geography and societal conditions are the key factors to information need and knowledge system.

Recent Trends in Agricultural Live hood

• Sustainable Agriculture

• Community Supported Agriculture

Recent Trends in Agricultural Live hood….

• Urban Farming

• Buy Fresh, Buy Local

Agrarian Community in India

• Indian agriculture began by 9000 BCE• Diverse agro-based ethnic communities with their

living legacy • Still Agriculture is demographically the broadest

economic sector• Average literacy rate in rural India is 68.9% (as per

2011 Census data)

• Tele Density in rural areas is 48.66% and wireless subscriber is 48.10% (TRAI report on 1st September 2015)

Agricultural Diversity Example: West Bengal

Agricultural Information System

Government Initiatives

• National Portal of India – Agriculture http://india.gov.in/topics/agriculture (English & Hindi)

• FARMERS’ PORTAL http://farmer.gov.in/• Agmarknet http://agmarknet.nic.in/• Seednet India http://seednet.gov.in/• National Agricultural Biocomputing Portal

http://webapp.cabgrid.res.in/biocomp/

Government Initiatives……

• Kishan Call Centre 1800 180 1551• mKishan http://mkisan.gov.in/• DACNET http://www.dacnet.nic.in/

Kissan Kerala: A CIS

Non-Governmental Initiatives

E-Choupal is an initiative of ITC Limited, a conglomerate in India, to link directly with rural farmers via the Internet. The programme installs computers with Internet access in rural areas of India to offer farmers up-to-date marketing and agricultural information.

Non-Governmental Initiatives

Where is the gap?• Farming in India is still depends upon traditional agriculture

system. As RML (formerly Reuters Market Light), Feb 2015, “Indian farmers need reliable agriculture information and alternate marketing channels

• 94% of farmers in India depend upon ‘fellow farmers’ as the preferred source of information, followed by 10% on agriculture retailers, 4% of TV/Radio and only 3% on agri-extension officers.

• Lingual barrier• Lack of ICT Infrastructure for public access• Very low rate of Information Literacy• Diverse Agriculture System & Need of Localization of Community

Information Service

How to bridging the gap & meet up the requirement?Application of Social Networking to communicate & express community needs

How to bridging the gap & meet up the requirement?

http://www.ais.gov.bd/

Need to Develop Local Agricultural Knowledge BankIndian Context

• Diverse geographical location and agricultural system

• Community memory based knowledge transfer tradition

• Absence of documentation of traditional agricultural knowledge system

• Distance of agrarian community with modern agricultural knowledge transfer system

Community Participation in Knowledge Bank Development

• Participate to archive the traditional knowledge by using audio visual technology and web medium

• Participate in new knowledge generation• Participate in community information

dissemination programme –example community radio programme

• Interactive feed back mechanism

Application of ICT to fulfill the Explicit and Implicit Information Need of Agrarian Community

• Use of m-technology - SMS, mail service, voice message

• Use of Social Media like ‘facebook’, ‘twitter’, ‘Pinterest’, ‘Instragram’ with web-analytics like ‘Simply Measured’ to easily maintain local User Database with detail Information Seeking Behaviour data.

Community Participation in Knowledge Bank Development

Role of Librarians

• Bridge between agrarian community and existing knowledge

• Provide personal assistance for information retrieving

• Provide information regarding their daily information need – market information, cultivation problems

• Arrange information literacy programme

Role of Librarians…

• Identify the local information need by user survey in regular interval

• Explore the indigenous knowledge and extract as well as archive with contemporary technology

• Arrange user awareness programme and user meet up programme

• Develop interactive user feedback mechanism by using social networking, mobile technology also use local languages as communication and User Interface Language

Conclusion

In India, formal, modern technology based agricultural information system need to be established and localization of agricultural information system will be the most prime one.

Thank You