Giving IT roots

Come 2003, the rural economy of a large part of South India is slated to witness a vital transformation through an integrated delivery mechanism covering both the supply and demand aspects in the agricultural sector. And the change is going to be brought in with the primary agriculture cooperative credit societies (PACS) as the medium.

Members of these PACS in South India can then access both procurement prices and markets (mandis) on a click of the mouse. Sitting at home in the village, they can access fertiliser, seed and pesticide markets across the country.

While PACS currently have access to credit, banking and trade only, they will be in a position to access a plethora of utilities by year-end, including credit cards, insurance, markets, travel, healthcare, child welfare, weather, education and government services.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? The mechanism is being enabled by CoOptions Technologies Ltd, a software services provider specialising in building application service provider (ASP) solutions for the rural sector.

CoOptions was promoted by the co-founder and former Joint Managing Director of Infosys Technologies, N.S. Raghavan, who is currently the Chairman of the Murugappa Group.

The company has entered into an alliance with UNICEF to provide an integrated information system for women welfare and child care in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Under a pilot project already under way in Andhra Pradesh, CoOptions is in the process of enabling close to 40 lakh members of around 1,000 PACS in four districts - Nizamabad, Krishna, Chittoor and West Godavari. Subsequently, it will deploy its product, Pax@2000, in most of the 4,610 societies across the State, based on the pilot project experience.

When fully operational in AP, Pax@2000 will cover nearly 25,000 villages. CoOptions is on the verge of entering into an agreement with Karnataka.

According to the CoOptions Chief Executive Officer, Subrahmanyam Yadavalli, over 65 per cent of the country's population lives in villages and depends on agriculture for its living. "They are usually supported by cooperative societies with loans and other options. It is estimated that the cooperatives in India cover over 60 per cent of the population.

These local societies also create and manage production and investment credit, providing around 60 per cent of the agricultural credit needs. They form the bottom rung in a multi-tiered structure that reaches right up to the national level."

The AP Government has adopted the ASP model wherein PACS will pay an initial subscription and also an average monthly fee in advance on a half-yearly basis.

The entire financial investment in the project will be made by CoOptions.

CoOptions is gearing to install Information Dissemination and Acquisition Centres (IDACs) at each of the PACS to bridge the digital divide between the rural and urban economies.

According to CoOptions, Pax@2000 is the first of its kind for the cooperative sector. According to Subrahmanyam the product was developed to bring in transparency and improve the efficiency of rural credit in an integrated environment that provides a complete solution for village credit and banking needs.

The software solution has been positioned as the hub of the rural segment, i.e., the cooperative societies, which help the farmer interface with banks, private business houses and the Government.

Subrahmanyam says it also forms the basis for the establishment of a farmer information repository system and draws the farmer into electronic governance.

Pax@2000 has been designed to provide integration into the higher levels of the credit system - the district central cooperative banks and state cooperative banks.

The aim is to streamline operations at the grassroot level, ensure village-level supply of credit to members through a single-window system and to enable the farming community, with minimal exposure to computers, to transact and gather information with ease.

Developed and designed in a user-friendly manner with pictographic navigational methods and regional language support, the product forms the basis for a village kiosk which will run on a touch-screen mode, he says.

It is available in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarathi, Hindi and English. CoOptions plans to offer it in 16 more languages soon.

As an extension to Pax@2000, CoOptions has developed Smart Kis@n, a smart-card based solution for farmers.The Smart Kis@n Card serves as a credit card and also as a farmer identification card. It enables the farmer to deal with the bank from his respective PACS, district central cooperative bank (DCCB) or the State-level cooperative bank.

Subrahmanyam feels the seamless integration of the credit system, involving the beneficiaries and facilitators, allows online transactions to be conducted accurately, efficiently and with transparency.

CoOptions further plans to leverage the reach of the Internet by launching a portal dedicated to rural India. It proposes to address the requirements of the rural sector - be it in production credit, investment credit, trade, markets, healthcare, education, governance and allied activities through its multi-lingual, multi-vortal solution - Indiaruralworld.com.

CoOptions proposes to build infrastructure in terms of hardware, software and utilities at the grassroot level, data centres at the district level, data warehouses at the State level and provide information services, implementation services and training services.

In the first phase, it plans to implement the project in around 2,000 societies in AP and establish around nine centres at districts. The next phase will cover another 2,000 societies and the setting up of centres in the remaining districts.

"We propose to provide these facilities through service-level agreements at affordable costs to the credit system. The outlay for the total infrastructure is estimated at around Rs 60 crore. We are willing to bring in these investments into the State in a phased manner with the help of venture capital funds," Subrahmanyam says.

The AP Government has asked the company to incorporate modules for connectivity among the 295 market committees, around 100 Rythu Bazaars and 4,500 single windows across the State, along with the PACS. The effective implementation of such programmes is expected to enable the farmers to substantially cut down costs and improve agricultural production levels."In addition to the traditional activities of cooperative credit, banking and trade, cooperatives can become the hub for a whole range of community services such as insurance, health services, child care, women welfare, market information, agro practices and a lot more," says Subrahmanyam.

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