Innovative use of ICT as a tool to CSR and Agri-business- A case study of Sugarcane Information System in Uttar Pradesh (India)

Before the end of first decade of 21st century no one would have thought that advantages of information and communication technology (ICT) will reach to the doorsteps of millions of farmers of this country, particularly to the small and marginal farmers of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.). Development and introduction of Sugarcane Information System (SIS) in 2010 can therefore, be considered as an innovative use of ICT for the benefit of millions of sugarcane growers of U.P., having low literacy rate and living in rural area, having low connectivity of information technology, and has rightly won several prestigious National/ International awards. Sugar industry, after textile, is the second largest agro-based industry in India. There are about five million sugarcane growers in country out of which three million are from U.P. alone. Unlike other crops farmers remain busy in harvesting and marketing of sugarcane for 150 to 180 days (November to April) in a year and prior to implementation of “SIS” they were facing lot of difficulties with regard to estimates of area and production of sugarcane, to get information on schedule of supplying sugarcane to the concerned sugar mills, weighment of sugarcane, payment of cane price etc. A case study of SIS introduced for sugarcane marketing was conducted in four selected sugar mills of U.P. It was found that with the introduction of SIS measurement of sugarcane area of every farmer is being done with the help of “GPS”, with high degree of accuracy, information on schedule of cane supply is sent to individual farmer by SMS, for weighment particularly at collection centres HHC (Hand held computers) are used and information on payment of cane price is sent to individual farmer. SIS has been introduced in all the sugar mills in U.P. Out of four sugar mills covered in this case study SakhotiTanda closely followed by Daurala sugar mills have 100 percent adoption of all the components of SIS, whereas other two are also trying to reach goal of 100 % adoption. All the stakeholders i.e. farmers, sugar mills and sugarcane department were found to be satisfied with the introduction of this system. There are several advantages of “SIS” to all the stakeholders viz; transparency in marketing system and mutual trust developed between farmers and sugar mills, saving in time of farmers, reduction in stalement time of sugarcane between harvesting and crushing, resulting into higher cane weight for farmers and increased sugar recovery for sugar mills