The Oracle’s prophecy

In conversation with Shuchi Srivastava, SPS Grover, Senior Director – E-Business, Oracle India, discusses the practicalities intrinsic to the successful utilisation of ICTs in rural India

What do you think are the emerging ICTs that are practically applicable in India?

There are various agencies that are actively involved in the successful application of technology-centric projects across the agricultural value-chain. Programme implementation agencies; agencies that are empowered to introduce policy level changes; government -based agencies that are providing help to farmers in the area of supplying key agricultural inputs and independent farmers looking to increase their productivity are some examples of the players that are involved in internalising these technologies. It is the individual requirements of these agencies that will determine the nature of ICTs used in India.

Given that the Government both at the Centre and State levels largely regulates agriculture in India, what is the role that private providers of IT-enabled services can hope to play?

Agriculture in India has largely not been affected by the IT revolution. But I do believe that small beginnings have been made. Projects on the computerisation of land record registrations are being implemented in six or seven states. A first foray has been made in regulating the state involvement in one of the most prized possessions of the farmers – their land.

Is the Andhra Pradesh State Wide Area Network (Apswan) running on Oracle?

Yes, the entire project is running on Oracle.

From when Apswan was first conceptualised to the manner in which it functions today, what were the key learnings for the future?

Apswan was a project where it was clear right from the onset that the very architecture of the project should be such that its scale is accessible to all the stakeholders. Since the concept of using IT as a part of day-to-day dealings has not really caught on, the actual practicalities involved in the successful implementation was a problem area.

But, overall this joint endeavour has been very successful. The introduction of Geographical Information Systems that provide highly accurate data pertaining to key areas of measurement, which in turn are critical elements of the entire architecture of the system at large, is encouraging.

In India, agricultural land-holdings are extremely fragmented. Thus when putting a system in place that would prove beneficial to both land holders and the Government, is there a gap in information that could be encountered?

Due to these very grassroot ground realities, it is imperative that at the initial planning stages it should be clear that the very architecture of the system should possess multiple layers.

Where the entire support that is being sought from IT-enabled services has to have multiple heads that have to work simultaneously in complete synergy with each other. What is of extreme importance in this nature of communication structure is that for all these levels of information generation and transmission, quality standards have to be maintained uniformly in order to prevent any overlap, gap or degeneration of the system.

Quality maintenance becomes extremely crucial because different states have varying amount of funds available at a particular time. Thus, quality guidelines and systems have to be built in at the stage of inception itself.

What communication technologies does Oracle have to offer to agriculturists in India?

We have systems where we have developed the technical expertise to assimilate both the textual and the spatial data in the same database.

What kind of format should the spatial information be in order for it to be accessible to all in an extremely user-friendly manner?

The format type is not really the most critical part of developing a system; what is really crucial is that there should be consensus amidst all stakeholders that the one decided on is the most cost-effective and user-friendly. Like, for example in the EU, farmers are accorded subsidies on the basis of the land-use type. In this context, Oracle has been used to build e-governance suites or ERPs there.

The actual recording of the land-holdings is being carried out by spatial systems, and that is how the government is able to determine the land-parcel that the farmer possesses in terms of the use that it is being put to, and the farmer in turn is able to carry out the transaction with the government in terms of the claim that s/he has to the subsidies offered.

What about the involvement of private players. If they are looking at accessing records of such a nature before investing in rural areas, where would they access it from in India?

As of now, all such records are the property of the government. A national initiative to map such grassroot level information is direly required where access to them would not be a tedious procedure once the purpose of gleaning such information has been established and validated. Field surveys at....

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