Utilization of Agriculture Service of E-Choupal by Rural People of Rajasthan

ITC's e-choupal is internet kiosk, village gathering place and e-commerce hub all rolled into one. It caters to the information needs of the farmers at their doorstep by bridging the information and service gap of rural India. It also established a low-cost fulfillment system focused on the needs of rural India, which helps in mitigating rural isolation, create more transparency for farmers, and improve their productivity and income. e-choupal has been running since June, 2000 and till now no systematic effort has been made to study the usefulness of e-choupal for rural people. Thus, the present research was undertaken to study the utilization of e-choupal services by rural people which will be useful in improving present effort. The present study was conducted in four districts namely Sri Ganga Nagar, Kota, Bharatpur, and Chittorgarh of Rajasthan. Two panchayat samities from each district and two villages from each panchayat samiti were selected on random basis. The sample consisted of 160 women and 160 men users of e-Choupal. Personal interview technique was used for collecting data. The data were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean per cent score and Z test. The findings of the study clearly indicated that majority of the users were using e-Choupal website to access information about market price of agriculture products (74.1%) and weather forecast (67.8%). Findings further revealed that the utilization of Choupal Pradarshan Khet and Choupal Hub was good. Rural people utilized these services to get high profit on their crops. Thus, e-Choupal has helped in socio-economic development of rural people in terms of increase in agriculture production, adoption of improved technologies, marketing of agriculture produce and timely access to agriculture inputs.