Hi everybody there, We can take up some pilot interevention in certain agriculture clusters and outcome of the intervention can be compared with that of control cluster with similar characteristics with that of pilot testing area. The outcome in terms of economic benefits and other social impact can be publicised. Prior to the intervention priliminary survey has to be done in the pilot testing area to come up with a status in terms of economic and social issues and select few parameters like attitude, practice and knowledge etc. Impact of the intervention then be easily monitored during or at completion of the intervention. We are looking for taking up such activities at our end in Northeast India. I believe it may interest the forum. Dr. Monjul Islam Secretary Genreral FARMER

[u][color][color]Attention: My views are specific to Northeast India only[/color][/color][/u] I am not aware of any systemic research to asess characteristics and success factors in use of mobile telephony in rural areas, particularly in Northeast India. However, some visible impact can be observed in other developed agriculture belts within India where systemic exchange of information in regards of agriulture commudities are done to the benefit of rural agricultural farmers. I am also not aware of any specific process of use of mobile telephony in exchange of information related rural agriculture apart from the process that is used by the conventional mobile telephone service providers. People usually do exchange informations conventionally which includes information related to agriculture marketing, queries related to management problems etc which is not of much general impact specific to rural agriculural communities. Community Information Centres in most part of the region could not make much impact to the benefit of the rural farmers. This is largely attributed to lack awareness amongst the rural farmers, effective management of data / information source, information management at the centres, systemic dissemination of the information etc. Factors that would have been much of benefit to the rural farming communties includes general awareness on the information that the rural farmers can access through mobile telephony and benefit thereof, educating on the use and access of information, development of need based systems in different places, data / information back up system etc which requires active participation of the state as well as other stakeholder also. Factors that needs to be avoid is information overloading, passing off of mis-information and prevent the vulnerable rural communities from exploitation from service providers. In my opinion, mobile telephony is the best tool to bridge the rural digital divide in this part of the world which will help in globalization process too.