Rikin Gandhi’s novel idea to film and screen ‘best practice’ videos of farming techniques across villages in India has wooed both farmers and the government.
On the other hand, if Ray were to stroll through certain villages across six Indian states that non-profit Digital Green is working in, he may encounter somewhat more surreal scenes—of villagers erecting tripods affixed with digital Kodak pocket cameras, and then framing farmers working in fields in close-ups and master shots. Some, standing next to the camera, will be asking a farmer specific questions about a crop pest or an irrigation technique. Others will be busy story-boarding scenes. Another villager in a thatched hut nearby will probably be editing footage on Windows ‘Moviemaker.’ What on earth could be going on here?
Ray would not be faulted for thinking that India’s rural dystopia has given birth to a radical resurgence of Italian neo-realism filmmaking—which inspired film makers such as Bimal Roy and Ray—amongst the rural masses. Perhaps a Doordarshan broadcast of De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’ has yet again galvanised a movement to chronicle the plight of the masses.
A closer inspection reveals something very different—what is, in fact, a novel plan crafted by an aspiring astronaut, New Jersey-native Rikin Gandhi, using digital technology to capture and disseminate ‘best practices’ in farming techniques. Gandhi’s DG hires ‘community facilitators’ from the districts it works in—30-50 from each district, each responsible for 1-2 villages—who are the organisation’s channel to farmers.
Each team of film-makers, which comprises of 3-4 facilitators and an editor, roam about shooting and editing videos on a variety of agricultural techniques—paddy cultivation, seed selection, germination testing and so on. Once the footage is slapped together by a local trained in editing, these 8-10 minute films then make a tour of the entire district in a kind of travelling film festival for farmers. Appointed villagers, armed with svelte movie projectors the size of your hand, and destined to incite pangs of jealousy in tech mavens, screen these movies in daily sessions. Each farmer who attends pays Rs 2-4 per screening which go to these facilitators.
‘Dabangg’ it is not, but these videos have become hugely popular, having already been seen by 60,000 farmers across 800 villages in seven states. “ Over the years, the national sample survey says that traditional government channels—tv, radio and newspapers—are reaching a proportionally small number of farmers,” says Gandhi. “Most farmers are relying upon each other, or the mandi or the neighbour, for advice on what to grow next. We’re saying that with technology, we can leverage those social networks and broaden them so more farmers can participate.”
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Most importantly, Gandhi’s videos offer a beleaguered sector valuable psycho-social succour in addition to practical know-how. “We find that one of the big challenges in agriculture is a lack of confidence and interest in being a farmer,” adds Gandhi. “It is seen by most as a vocation of last resort. Through this process of sharing and producing of content, farmers develop incremental confidence in themselves. This really makes a big difference in their ability to believe in themselves and help their fellow farmers,” he says
Some—like Rikin’s parents did, not too long ago—would shake their heads in consternation upon hearing that a Cal Tech undergraduate in computer science, with a Masters in aerospace engineering from MIT is mucking about filming the art of building a perfect compost in some remote village. ‘Tiger Moms’ would be anguished to learn that Gandhi, who was admitted to join the space program in the US and had already received his pilot’s license, gave it up. “Instead of trying to sacrifice everything for my own 15 minutes of fame in space I thought, maybe I should see what else I can do to be more helpful.”
In a quirk of fate, Gandhi, 29 — who looks like he could still be in his first year of college—decided to come down to India and check out the operations of a bio-diesel venture that some of his friends were trying to get off the ground in Maharashtra—his first experience in rural India. While the venture didn’t work out, Gandhi found himself being drawn towards Microsoft’s Lab in Bangalore. Experiments to link technology for emerging markets were being tinkered with there. One thing led to another and Digital Green was born.
In a matter of months, Rikin armed himself with a Kodak camera and literally ran around three villages in Karnataka, filming, asking questions and testing his theories. “I walked around with a camera and laptop trying to get farmers to watch this stuff. They initially thought I was a spy of some sort. I ended up learning kannada and eating lots of ragi muddhe,” he says.
His parents, meanwhile, continued to writhe in discomfort at what their prodigal son was up to (They have since come around and even visited Rikin at a field site in Madhya Pradesh.) Soon, Gandhi garnered $3 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and jumpstarted his project in 20 villages. He also wisely tied up with seven partner agencies such as Pradhan and BAIF who knew the agricultural terrain far better than he did. Twenty mushroomed to 350 in a year and a half.
Today DG is in 800 villages across six states and plans to reach 1200 by next year. Out of the 60,000 farmers who have seen DG’s videos, 37 per cent have adopted at least one best practice, and have consequently seen their incomes shoot up by Rs 20-30,000 a year. DG’s website features smartly designed analytics that contain a comprehensive reservoir of information on the history of DG’s farmers watching videos, sliced and diced in every which way possible. Techniques such as reducing water usage by upto 40% in paddy cultivation has gone from something practiced by 2 farmers in Karnataka to a technique being adopted across states by thousands.
So impressed is the government with Gandhi’s idea for rural upliftment that Digital Green been given $31 million, to work with partners and the government to considerably ramp up its efforts across india. “Pretty exciting stuff,” says Gandhi although you wouldn’t know it, judging by his usual low-intensity delivery. “Back when I was in Microsoft, we really had no such ambition of scaling up.” DG has also started work in a number of East African countries.
Gandhi, meanwhile, continues to indicate a singular disinterest in making money in any of the significant ways that someone in his position would. Despite his below-the-radar approach, however, the back-end of Digital Green’s analytical machine is already catching the eye of companies for its vastly cheaper, seamless, offline and online ERP software that allows sales force teams, for example, to plug in numbers in the field and see it effortlessly integrate into a web module when back in net connectivity. Gandhi has spun this off into a for-profit venture but has yet to do anything with it.
Godrej has also started to work with the for-profit entity by using DG’s video-based approach for its own extension efforts in contract farming. Another source of revenue: Digital Green’s recently launched Facebook game ‘Wonder Village’ where you can tackle challenges of rural development like reducing malaria incidences or optimise water usage. The game is free, but the premium version can be played at a higher intensity by paying in order to advance faster.
Quant jocks usually tend to gravitate towards enormously lucrative fields such as derivatives structuring, or at the very least, a McKinsey partnership position. Gandhi, however, is quite happy tooling around rural Bihar with his video camera. Somewhere, Satyajit Ray is smiling.