Question

Explain the role of technological improvements in raising agricultural productivity

Answer 1

Lele and Goswami discuss the potential of new technologies in raising farm productivity, and the challenges involved in turning the power of information and other technologies into a farmer-friendly technological revolution.


The Indian government and public-private partnerships are developing and disseminating a dizzying number of innovative, networked solutions, under the Digital India initiative, to increase safety nets and worker productivity. Yet, there are considerable challenges in turning the power of information and other technologies into a farmer-friendly technological revolution for India’s 156 million rural households.
These challenges include: (1) generating reliable, up-to-date, location-specific message content for a diverse agricultural sector to help stratified households shift to productive, knowledge-intensive agriculture as a business − government, private sector, and civil society have big roles to play; (2) spreading digital literacy, by teaching farmers how to choose and use apps, which are, or soon to be, available in regional languages; and (3) monitoring actual use and impact of interventions on users’ lives by understanding adoption and adaptation processes. All of these call for bottom-up, complementary investments in physical, human, and institutional capital, and farmer-friendly e-platforms, while forging ahead with many top-down policy and institutional reforms, for which progress is real and constraints holding back greater success better understood.



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