Periya Jakkhammal, a small time farmer of Theni district located in the southern part of Tamil Nadu was invited to address the Conference of Education Ministers of Common Wealth Countries in July 2009 held in Malaysia. As an active member of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Li mited (IKSL), Jakkhammal spoke on how the use of mobile communication services helped improve income levels of women in her district in the field of goat and cow rearing.

In this case, IKSL partnered with Thenibased NGO Vidiyal and Common Wealth of Learning, an intergovernmental body of Commonwealth countries focusing on strengthening learning. The objective of IKSL was to provide voice messages and helpline on sheep/goat and cow rearing, women's rights and other areas of interest.

“The primary focus of IKSL has been to leverage communications and provide relevant and location specific content to empower people in rural India,” says S C Mittal, Senior ED (Management Services & IT), Group CTO, IFFCO and Director, IKSL. IKSL was established as a telecommunications subsidiary of The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-operative Ltd. (IFFCO) in 2007 in partnership with Bharti Airtel for empowering the famers.

Prior to this, IFFCO was using kiosks to communicate with the rural population. The focus of the mobile initiative was to provide information directly to the farmers, deliver location specific, time sensitive information and important alert and ensure that the services does not add economic strain on the farmers.

“People had to come to the kiosk and this was a challenge. With increasing mobile penetration and lower costs over the last few years, we wanted people to reap maximum benefits using mobile phones,” says Mittal.

Empowering farmers
IKSL in partnership with Airtel launched Value Added Services (VAS) through a Green SIM card. Using this card, farmers got access to a unique VAS platform that broadcasts 5 free voice messages in specific zones in the country and on various topics related to mandi (market) prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts, dairy farming, animal husbandry, rural health initiatives, plant protection, employment opportunities, government schemes, etc. on a daily basis. Each voice message is of one minute duration. Other activities like mobile-based quiz, Phone In Programmes, etc. are also taken up.

In addition, the farmer can call on a dedicated helpline, manned by experts from various fields, to get answers to their specific queries.

“If an agent fails to resolve a particular query, it is escalated to a second tier of experts who address the required issues of the caller,” says Mittal.

There are around 60 experts spread in the country and the user base of IKSL has crossed 15 lakh across 18 states in the country. On an average, there are around 400 to 600 calls received by the helpline each day.

However, during harvesting seasons, there is a significant increase in daily calls received.

IKSL is also working towards reducing the cost of calls made by the farmers to the helpline. “We are in talks with Airtel, and hope to reduce the costs by at least 30 to 40 percent,” says Mittal.

Similar to having a focused approach on sheep rearing for women in Theni, IKSL has also supported other communities like increasing the yield and improve the quality of basmati rice production in Haryana.

This was a project implemented in Karnal, Kaithal and Kurukshetra in partnership with The Haryana State Cooperative Supply & Marketing Federation Ltd.(HAFED). Through the use of mobile services for the farmers in these parts, the output of basmati production increased by 25 percent as compared to last year.

“We plan to expand these services to a larger user base in the country,” says Mittal.

S C Mittal Senior ED, Group CTO, IFFCO and Director, IKSL