2Built
A national coordinating agency
The 2015 proposal
Give ICAR a larger coordinating role — orchestrate the cycle, advise on inputs and prices, run extension, and start courses like 'ICT in Agriculture'.
Where it stands in 2026
ICAR runs ~731 Krishi Vigyan Kendras and the ICT-in-Agriculture curriculum now exists across state agricultural universities. The orchestrating agency the deck wanted arrived as the Digital Agriculture Mission (2024) — inside the Ministry rather than ICAR itself.
The open gap
Coordination sits in the Ministry, not as the independent, autonomous institution the deck proposed.
How to sustain & deepen it
Make the Digital Agriculture Mission's coordinating role statutory and arm's-length — a standing, independent authority insulated from the electoral cycle — so the annual cycle is genuinely governed, not just administered year to year.
Sources
- ↗ Dept. of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare (schemes & Digital Agriculture Mission) — Govt. of India
- ↗ ICT in Agriculture: Connecting Smallholders to Knowledge, Networks & Institutions — World Bank (Open Knowledge Repository), 2017, updated ed.
- ↗ Agricultural Innovation Systems: An Investment Sourcebook — World Bank, 2012
- ↓ Agricultural Extension: Good Intentions and Hard Realities — The World Bank Research Observer, 2004
- ↗ Agricultural Policies in India — OECD, 2018
- ↓ Transforming public agricultural extension and advisory service systems in smallholder farming — FAO, 2022