Sanjay Borkar, agri and Shivrai
Just met, this evening, Sanjay Borkar of the Pune-based Shivrai Technologies, and they have been doing some work on IT in agriculture. Some links one got from them include Parivartan.net, Co-operativeonnet.com, Mahasugarfed.org, Pomagranateindia.org and Cogenindia.org Parivartan.net is growing into a full-fledged portal with 25 different services, under the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation. It's goal is ICTs for agriculture, and says it has a network of info-mediaries, offers information to farmers' queries, and promotes courses like a certificate course in good agricultural practices. They also have 6-7 CDs (on mango cultivation, biofertilizers, mushroom cultivation, medicinal plants, dairy management and with a couple more under development). One reality: this content is almost wholly in Marathi. That's a bad (if you don't speak that language) or great thing (if you consider that 97 million people live in Maharashtra itself). For their part, the other sites focus on cooperatives, the Maharashtra Sugar Federation, and those interested in the co-generation of power from sugar factory waste. Check it out... Their presentation with an English explanation of the capacities of their websites, specially pariavartan.net, was impressive.
posted by fredericknoronha @ 1:41 PM
