Gujarat, India – For farmers’ organization (FOs) in India, one of the key areas of emphasis in recent years has been the use of technology by grassroots women to increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness of last-mile operations and to improve delivery.
Towards this, SEWA, in partnership with the private sector, has piloted several innovative mobile-based ICT applications. Designed in the local language with particular emphasis on ease of use, these ICT applications have shown significant promise in improving grassroots operations, and have been marked by SEWA for upscaling across Gujarat and other States. Some of these applications are:
PaySe and mPaise: Peer-to-peer e-wallet payment solutions which have been pilot tested with 10 Savings Groups in the Mehsana District and are now being extended to 50 groups in the second phase.
mBachat: A Mobile Application for Savings Collection – to date 1500+ SHGs (10,000+ members) are boarded on mBachat installed on mobile phones and tablets. Grassroots leaders are carrying tablets installed with mBachat to the villages and feeding members’ savings information in real-time. By using mBachat, cost (30%-40%), efforts and time (50%) have been reduced and productivity has increased.
SEWA Membership Management System (MMS): SEWA is developing and implementing a database management system in order to collect its members’ basic profile and financial details. To date 1400,000+ unique ids have been assigned and forms are printed in 4 languages to collect and complete the members’ profile collection.
Rudi Sandesha Vyavhar (RSV) Mobile Application: Rudi Sandesha Vyavhar mobile application provides accurate timely information to farmers and grants women producers with an affordable, simple-to-use, easily accessible mobile tool, which enables them to place orders for new stock, keep track of their inventory and sales, and even run credit outstanding reports on their customers–all using just their basic feature phones.
Aside from the tangible impact on operational efficiency, the use of these digital applications by grassroots women makes them familiar and comfortable with technology and readies them for other mobile-based banking solutions.
Awareness of digital payment platforms, capacity building training and practical application of digital skills during their day to day dealings created a comfort level with digitization for all our members. Hence, during the November 2016 switch from ‘cash to cashless’ a majority of our members could manage the transition smoothly, calmly and skillfully–with just a little crucial intervention from SEWA. #
About MTCP2
The Medium-Term Cooperation Program Phase 2 (MTCP2), a five-year capacity building program supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the European Union (EU), has been implemented in 19 countries across three sub-regions—Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific—engaging 1,544 sub-national farmers organizations (FOs) with a total membership of around 22 million farmers. The funding support (total budget of $ 5 million for the whole duration of the project across 19 countries) serves as a catalytic fund that will allow FOs to enhance their capacity to be effective channels of economic services to farmers. The program has contributed to the formation of the strong national platform of FOs with improved capacity to engage in policy processes and mobilize resources from mainstream agricultural development programs like extension services, credit, and pre and post-harvest facilities. The program also helped in transforming farmers’ associations into commodity-based cooperatives to strengthen the role of small-scale farmers within an inclusive and sustainable value-chain. The program is being implemented by the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC).
Comments are closed