vijay.aditya

Institutionalization of “information” service delivery in rural areas could enable local economic development, adaptation and better governance while ensuring greater independence to grassroots institutions and economy. My efforts in this direction at Ekgaon is enabling technologies for building greater role for local institutions in what and how they make use of information and how they integrate (or do not) their local economy with the regional/national/global economy. Ekgaon works towards building ecosystem of a self-supported community politically and financially independent while economically integrated in the best interest of community, environment and local economy, while ensuring sustainability of environment, culture and society. My intervention is not new, however the approach is new. Ekgaon engages its energies in institutional service delivery models. In my understanding “Information delivery” is not a passive action but an active service with a clear business rationale, profits and sustainability. Traditionally information enabled services in rural areas are considered qualitatively less important, however with global integration of supply chains, the productions systems and markets there are requirements of services which are qualitatively superior, quantitatively balanced, culturally contextual and timely available. Through Ekgaon I seek to address this service gap by identifying key business areas where targeted information and support services could be provided that meet client expectations. These business areas, which have definitive impact on the economy of the rural areas and my efforts at ekgaon is to enable support and ensure better benefits to the clients.

In the birth place of Indian civilisation, Indus Valley I feel a deep connection and fondness. This is not only to do with my interest in history, but also to the great level of achievements this civilisation achieved. A democratic systems of governance, trade guilds, farm production systems, cotton clothes and a amazing city planning model. This is a place I am fond of but yet to visit.

My passion and vision for impact of our work is to enable grassroots communities get greater control over there governing institutions and economy. To meet this objective at ekgaon we encourage and ensure that community based institutions are equal partner in development value chain. Our technologies enable grassroots communities to have greater control over the environment that secures livelihoods and ensures sustainability of there ecosystems.

Vijay’s work in the field of rural service provision extends across a wide array of initiatives, programs and software; driven by and in the hope that rural consumers are in control of what services they can access and receive. Ekgaon’s emphasizes on partnerships and association for business service delivery to rural areas. Ekgaon has adopted consortium approach for enabling institutional service delivery; this model has been quite successful in meeting expectations of clients as well as partners. The consortium’s are open bodies and allow partnerships/membership of any organizations sharing the consortium goals and objectives and believes in fair play as well as commitment to ensure “community ownership” in the supply chain. Ekgaons software’s are developed in open source technologies and are shared with wider community. Wherever possible ekgaon tries to ensure that service delivery to the end-user is free or subsidized by revenues accrued from higher-end intermediary in supply/value chains. Ekgaon is developing and providing services in the areas of Microfinance Health Insurance Remittances Agri-Forecast Agro-Advisory Services Market Information Services Supply Chain Management Systems Our partners in providing these services are organizations having socio-economic interest in the area and sector. We create institutional partnerships with such organizations, which could be research and development organizations, marketing, technology development, NGOs, SHGs etc We are currently working on certain identified sectors of service delivery to rural areas, these are 1) Rural Financial Services – These include microfinance, insurance and Remittances. Of these services only microfinance services are at commercial stage of development and we are generating revenue from it. Insurance and Remittances are the areas where we are presently doing research and development work in partnership with partners and raising funds for developing prototype systems which are able to help us develop cost effective service delivery model. 2) Climate and Weather Information Services – We have started providing agri-forecast services, however we are still to work on crop wise weather products linked to insurance support. We are presently doing several action research projects across Indian and Nepal on flood, cyclone and storm early warning systems as well creating awareness about lack of policy support on provisioning of climate and weather information services in India. These services are to be scaled up for commercial launch, for which we are trying to raise funds. 3) Agro-advisory services: We are presently providing agri-market information for medicinal plants across the country commercially. We are planning to include more agro-commodities for provisioning of market prices as well as other agro-advisory services. 4) Supply Chain management Systems: We are presently developing systems for traceability, production management, input management and assurance of fair and environment friendly practices in production systems. This system would allow organic production management and fair trade certification. This project is under field implementation at systems level before technology development would be taken up.