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
The deck asked for one body to orchestrate the whole annual cycle, and the pieces now exist. ICAR runs about 731 Krishi Vigyan Kendras — the district science centres that demonstrate, train and feed advice into the field — and the ICT-in-Agriculture curriculum is now taught across the state agricultural universities. The orchestrating layer the deck imagined finally arrived in 2024 as the Digital Agriculture Mission, but it sits inside the Ministry of Agriculture rather than in an arm’s-length authority. So the function is real; its independence is not yet guaranteed.
The open gap
Coordination sits in the Ministry, not as the independent, autonomous institution the deck proposed.
How to sustain & deepen it
What exists by administrative order should be secured by statute. Make the Digital Agriculture Mission’s coordinating role a standing, independent authority with its own mandate and budget — insulated from the electoral cycle, the way a central bank or an election commission is — so the annual agri cycle is genuinely governed year on year, not re-administered at each government’s discretion. Give it the explicit job of stitching the registries, advisories and schemes into one system, and a published mandate it can be held to. Continuity is the asset here: an institution that outlives its founders is what turns a mission into infrastructure.
Where it sits in the chain
See the full map →Depends on
Nothing — this is a foundation the rest are built on.
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