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Working together with Microsoft partner CropData, the Union Agriculture Ministry has set up a new data aggregation system to locate all farms across India along with information on stress levels in individual farms.
According to The Citizen, the Nagpur-based agritech startup has compiled data collected from various farms to create an online marketplace where farmers connect with corporate buyers, avail extended credit from banks using algorithm modules using information from the PM Kisan scheme, the soil health database, subsidy data, etc.
Yet, farmer unions across the country as well as individual farmers who were interviewed during the course of the project said they were never consulted at any step nor did they give their consent for the same. As per the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 consent of the concerned person is crucial prior to any personal data collection. However, the same does not apply to governments if the administrative body claims to compile information to provide “service or benefit” to the individual.
Earlier, 55 farmers and civil rights collectives criticised the decision to create such a database especially by involving Microsoft. They questioned the lack of national policy to protect farmers’ privacy and other related issues. Still, the report states that “scientists” accompanied by panchayat officials have already visited villages to note down phone numbers, Aadhaar card numbers, records of crop prices and farming methods from farmers. Officials also set up the peasant’s account and take multiple photographs of the field.
The process has left farmers unsure of what is to happen to physical mandis, especially in post-Covid-19 times. There is no redressal page for their queries or complaints as per the report.
On April 14, the Agriculture Ministry permitted CropData to work in 100 villages across ten districts in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh to “help farmers by building a collaborative platform and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, market demand and prices.”
While the Memorandum of Understanding for this is unavailable in the public domain, such an allowance potentially gives Microsoft access to the data of five crore farmers. All of this was done following the introduction of the ‘Agristack’ – a platform aimed to tackle long-standing agricultural problems such as low use of bank credit and wastage in agricultural supply chains.
Conceived by NITI Aayog, the idea was first discussed in a February 2018 report on ‘doubling farmers’ income’ by digitising the agriculture industry. In 2020, the central government then declared the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act of 2020 that allows the Centre to set up an online network of farmers, traders, lenders, transporters and customers. The law also allows for new laws referring to the data collected from farmers and traders.
The report said that primary information is gathered through AI devices connected to the Microsoft network, which then uses the same to inform customers about “risk, cultivated crop, irrigated area, lot holding size and production values.” The idea is to replace middle persons with the more legally accountable corporations.
However, Internet Freedom Foundation Policy Counsel Rohin Garg in the report warned against the potential exploitation of freely accessible data by large agribusiness and fintech companies through prohibitive input costs, low prices and usurious loans. He argued that data sharing must happen on terms that benefit farmers.
The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan also spoke about the lack of representation in the Agristack overseeing committee and dismissed the elimination of middle people, who at least are accessible to aggrieved farmers.
The article goes on to look at the current model of CropData that aggregates farmers based on their ‘score’ irrespective of the size of their holdings. This means that farmers with better scores avail better bank loans, working against marginal and small farmers. Another concern is the technical difficulty in linking credit or market access and other benefits to the Aadhaar database.
Despite Supreme Court orders, government agencies continue to insist on Aadhaar cards for crucial “benefits” such as food. This even though the UIDAI CEO himself accepted a 12 percent rate of Aadhaar authentication failure for public services in 2018.
Farmers and organisations aware about this project have demanded consultations between farmers and their state governments regarding this digital avenue. Protesters argued that such policies of digitisation should be employed only after attaining due consent from farmers and state governments who handle the agriculture subject in the State list.
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