Gramhal – Udayvir Guha Sircar – 2023

Goals

The Gramhal team is dedicated to establishing a robust climate vertical within the organization. This initiative aims to center around the specific information requirements of farmers in the context of agriculture and climate change. It seeks to foster innovative solutions in this critical area.

To achieve this goal, Udayvir led comprehensive research at the intersection of climate, agriculture, and gender, resulting in a catalog of high-impact, cost-effective, and scalable intervention opportunities. 

Solutions

Udayvir approached the task with a comprehensive strategy, which encompassed several key facets:

• Providing holistic insight: Udayvir began by offering a holistic understanding of the climate change and agriculture landscape in India. This included shedding light on the challenges encountered by female farmers, with a focus on the intricate web of gender roles and deeply ingrained societal inequalities.
• Interventions report: He then prepared an interventions report that outlined seven potential solutions. These encompassed weather and climate forecasting (agro-meteorology), integrated pest management, mobile-based livestock advisory services, video-based information dissemination, a farmer-to-farmer extension approach, soil testing, and a farmer field school approach.
• Strategic considerations: Udayvir applied a strategic lens that leveraged Gramhal’s position as an agri-tech provider delivering localized intelligence through digital services. This strategic approach involved shortlisting interventions based on their scalability, technological enablement, and information dissemination capabilities.
• Metric-based analysis: Each of the identified interventions underwent a rigorous evaluation using five critical metrics: gender sensitivity, scalability, economic viability, solution maturity, and environmental impact. This analytical framework ensured that only the most promising and impactful interventions were considered for implementation.

Potential Impact

By outlining these intervention possibilities, the organization has acquired the means to explore avenues for providing farmers with vital information and fostering awareness of climate-smart practices.

Being gender-sensitive and transformative approaches, these possibilities present an opportunity to empower female farmers in their decision-making processes and enhance their engagement within their communities.