Digital Inclusion for the Differentaly-abled Farmers

Abstract

In July 2016, the Registrar General of India (RGI) released Census 2011 data on disabled population. Out of 2.68 crore disabled persons in India, 20% have movement disability, followed by persons with seeing and hearing disability, at 19% each. Majority of the disabled population i.e. 63.66% either do not work due to their dependency on others or are not skilled enough to do the work. Only 54.5% are literates, of which only 8.5% had attained graduates or higher levels of education. Lack of the required resources or infrastructure akin to their need, is also a key challenge. Government has launched slew of social security schemes to provide opportunities to People with Disabilities (PwDs), but challenge lies with accessing these benefits. This is especially difficult for the 69% of disabled persons from rural. Spread of mobile phone based digital technology and services have brought more transparency and awareness. Social collaboration applications like facebook, What'sApp have become popular due to forming a close group of the people with similar disability and sharing the information about new schemes and success stories. A few disabled farmers from MP are using local language mobile app mKRISHI® CCA to manage their farms. This case study depicts how a family based collaborative approach with some training can enable a, disabled person to play a constructive role in the farming. This paper highlights the service design aspects and the delivery mechanism to achieve the same.