Services are available to farmers in various packages starting from Rs 50 for a quarter, to Rs 100, Rs 250 and Rs 500 per annum. Special offers are available for self-help groups, voluntary organizations and farmers associations. Under the Rs 100 package alone, Asha offers 10 telephonic responses every month to queries from farmers, 12 hours of free Internet surfing, and even a 25 percent rebate on printing services.

The challenges faced in implementing Project Asha turned out to be advantages once they were addressed. Framing the right content and localizing some of it was a test of commitment and liaisoning abilities. Often, poor logistics and lethargy in the system did not help the updating capabilities. While capacity building among stakeholders was effected through workshops to build awareness and participation, it still faced major constraints on Web development resources and connectivity.

Under Project Asha, the CICs have been developed as repositories of agri-business information by becoming key service delivery points for the portal. Content development, capacity building, and coordination and management were undertaken by ASFAC, whose project news with certain functionalities and information on buying and selling are accessible only to registered users.

The primary step in setting up Asha was using the existing infrastructure at the 219 CICs across Assam for effective services delivery. They utilized the existing NICNET backbone for connectivity needs. Besides NIC's servers, where the portal services were hosted, the Assam State Center and the Solution Architect and Network Operation Group were roped in to design the software architecture, development and testing of interactive applications for the portal. The content is regularly updated on a secure VPN.

The heat of the nascent knowledge revolution on Assam's agricultural firmament has been felt in states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Thus far, accolades for the community matrix have rolled in fast and furious. In February 2006, Project Asha won the prestigious Golden Icon Award for Exemplary Leadership and ICT Achievement of the Year. Later in the month, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration-Mussoorie invited a presentation from Asha to IAS officer trainees on use of ICT in agriculture.

Even as the SFAC attached to the Indian government's Ministry of Agriculture requested 17 of its affiliate bodies in different states to replicate the initiative, Project Asha officials were busy evangelizing the project at e-governance seminars all over the country. For the first time, it was giving Assam's farmers a hand in the task of forging stronger farmer-public-private partnerships in the agri-marketing space.

The success of the project also lies in attracting organizations, like National Seeds Corporation, Indo-American Hybrid Seeds and Jain Irrigation, besides a number of national agricultural institutions and state universities, into partnerships with the initiative.

The Person Behind It

Ariz Ahammed

Director (training), Assam Administrative Staff College

We looked at a single-window approach to the farm sector while framing our IT architecture.