Technology for Rural Development
India is today among the countries leading the fourth industrial revolution. Now is an opportune moment for the country’s rural communities to close gaps that have persisted through the past. Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, and several other emerging technologies have the potential to help accelerate the transformation of rural communities.
Technology in agriculture
Agriculture, more than any other sector, has immense potential to accommodate these technologies and overcome yield barriers at a time when climate-related challenges threaten progress.
In places across India, Reliance Foundation is demonstrating the effective use of drones in farm operations. Finding new ways to assess crop health for insurance and other purposes is another strong area of focus.
While new technologies are beneficial and even crucial to addressing problems like labour shortage, their adoption is not without challenges given the small land-holding sizes of farms. Farmer collectives are helping overcome the barriers of scale.
Addressing climate-related challenges
Climate-related challenges are set to exacerbate and disproportionally affect rural communities. These challenges demand more resilience from rural households. Democratising information and knowledge are essential to enhancing resilience. The technologies of yesterday and today are being tied together to ensure data’s last-mile reach while efforts are on to extract more meaningful insights from data to tailor messages more effectively.
Tech-aided empowerment
Drawing from years of efforts of all stakeholders, Reliance Foundation has redoubled its commitment to skilling and empowering women through women-focused initiatives that encourage tech-aided micro-enterprise development at scale.
The current decade is fertile to achieve progress quickly. It is hoped that as a new self-reliant India emerges to take on global challenges on multiple fronts, people from the country’s rural communities will be those in the lead.
